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More "Taper" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his lodging. Neither he nor Rex spoke during the quarter of an hour they employed in reaching the street door, but Rex's arm was aching with the effort of sustaining and directing his companion. He lit a taper and prepared to help him up the stairs. But the sight of the familiar entrance recalled Greif to himself and dissipated the first stupor of his grief. He ascended the steps firmly, though he went like a man overcome with fatigue, to whom every movement is difficult. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... rest, a firm, round figure, no angles, everything, including elbows, in curves; blooming cheeks and smooth-skinned, taper-fingered hands tanned a very honest brown,—the hands of ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Isaac Newton's papers, by his little dog "Diamond" upsetting a lighted taper upon his desk, by which the elaborate calculations of many years were in a moment destroyed, is a well-known anecdote, and need not be repeated: it is said that the loss caused the philosopher such profound grief that it seriously injured ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... his family, some dating back to 1681 and 1702, and methinks I can see Lovecraft poring over these time-stained bits o' bookish lore as the monks of old followed the printed lines with quivering fingers in the taper's uncertain, flickering light. For Lovecraft appeals to me as a bookworm—one of those lovable mortals whose very existence seems to hang on the numbered pages of a heavy, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... them for me, I know!' said Cynthia, sitting down and beginning to feed herself daintily, touching them lightly with the ends of her taper fingers, and dropping each ripe berry into her open mouth. When she had eaten about half she stopped ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... soon safely moored, and the door of the building unlocked; and by the light of a wax taper, which we had brought on purpose, we found ourselves in a large empty room, without any fire-place. A heap of dead wood was soon collected at the entrance; and a glorious fire lighted up the small enclosure which surrounded the building, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... darke, how doost thou know 'tis he? Mart. Vpon his bloody finger he doth weare A precious Ring, that lightens all the Hole: Which like a Taper in some Monument, Doth shine vpon the dead mans earthly cheekes, And shewes the ragged intrailes of the pit: So pale did shine the Moone on Piramus, When he by night lay bath'd in Maiden blood: O Brother helpe me with thy fainting hand. If feare hath made thee faint, as mee it hath, Out of this ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... erroneous names tiger and hyaena, given to it by the early settlers. The muzzle is rather elongated, the ears short and erect, and the pupils elliptical, corresponding with its leaping, predaceous habits; if it had the characteristic brush instead of a long taper tail, its figure would bear a considerable resemblance to that of the fox. The female is much smaller, but more active and supple in its movements than the male. They prey upon kangaroos, opossums, bandicoots, and other ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... coal furnace, to a white-heat,—to a point just as near the melting as can be attained without actually dropping apart,—and then passed between three sets of rollers, each of which elongates the barrel, reduces its diameter, and assists in forcing it to assume the proper size and taper. The metal by this process is firmly compacted, becoming wholly homogeneous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... still, she confronted me, and I now observed that she was not so tall as from below I had imagined. She was, in fact, of a short stature rather, but of proportions so exquisite that she conveyed an impression of some height. In her hand she held a taper by whose light she had been surveying herself in her mirror at the moment of my advent. Her unbound hair of brown fell like a mantle about her shoulders, and this fact it was drew me to notice that she was in her night-rail, and ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... are frequently used as antidotes for these poisons. Binz found that dogs that have been stupified with alcohol could be awakened with coffee. It may thus be prescribed for hard drinkers to counteract the baleful excitability produced by alcohol; in fact, many topers taper off after a long debauch with coffee containing small amounts of alcoholic beverages. Considering its ability to counteract the slow intoxication of tobacco, it may be inferred that coffee is indispensable ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... word in the vestibule, A touch of taper fingers, A scent of roses, sweet and cool, When she has gone ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... connection for lighting, so they carried candles, Anthony holding one aloft for himself and Bettina, and Delia coming after with a taper. Peter, like a flash of flame, slipped ahead of Delia and was lost ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... altar of that church standeth over the place where St. Austin wrote with his staff by the well, and yet unto this day may no woman come in to that church. But there was a noble woman that said that she was not guilty in offending St. Austin, and took a taper in her hand and went for to offer it in the said church; but the sentence of Almighty God may not be revoked, for as soon as she entered the church her bowels and sinews began to shrink and she fell down dead in ensample of all other women; ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... swim before her in a quivering haze. Her strained eyes were fixed upon those other figures bringing up the rear—those men in the garb of the penitent, each bearing a fagot on his shoulder, and carrying a lighted taper ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... days by year-old children. This is the first cathedral we ever saw, and none ever so impressed us since. Vast, simple, awful in dimensions and height, just beginning to grow tall at the point where our proudest steeples taper out, it fills the whole soul, pervades the vast landscape over which it reigns, and, like Niagara and the Alps, abolishes that five- or six-foot personality in the beholder which is fostered by keeping company with the little life of the day in its little dwellings. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... life itself, must end, Gilbert at length seemed to be aware of the reality of the unpretending bed in the corner. Having repeated the prayers which his piety suggested, he extinguished the almost exhausted taper, and threw himself upon the bed. He could not sleep, however; for, great as the fatigue of the day had been, the excitement was greater. His mind was perpetually recurring to the events at the spring, from which they wandered to his father's lonely and anxious chamber: now he remembered ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... two, and found some large rolls of street posters, which had been left there by some disappointed canvasser the year before, and which had accompanied one cell of the cabin in its travels. Dane is a prompt man, and, in a minute more, he had locked the door behind him, had struck a wax taper which he had in his cigar-box, had rolled the paper roll out on the floor, to serve as a pillow. In five minutes more, covered with his heavy coat, he lay on the floor, sleeping as soundly as he had slept the year before, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... backbone. Now, my boy, you really must not keep me any longer with all this nonsense about Mollie. I have to go up to Rosendale, you know; Mrs. Cardell begged me to sit with her a little, and I am late now. Mollie will give you your tea. Come—have you forgiven your mother?' passing her white taper fingers over his ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... over him, which lay, for a little while at least, in the mere absence of pain; once, especially, when an older boy taught him to make flowers of sealing-wax, and he had burnt his hand badly at the lighted taper, and been unable to sleep. He remembered that also afterwards, as a sort of typical thing—a white vision of heat about him, clinging closely, through the languid scent of the ointments put upon the place to make ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... not taper; Genus *Condylostoma the peristome is widest at the end of the body; the ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins
... kind of pyramid some sixty feet in height. Old King Carnival, in effigy, was placed at the apex of the pyramid, and the interior was filled with comestibles that would set the whole erection in a blaze as soon as a taper was applied. When the signal was given, bells pealed and trumpets sounded glad farewell to the customs of the ancient carnival. The procession set forth from San Marco on Palm Sunday (led by white-robed children with garlands on their heads), and went round the city till ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... capillaire-berry pie an' bake-apple jelly. 'Twas pretty, too, t' see the way she had arrayed the table. There was flowers from the hills flung about on the cloth. An' in the midst of all—fair in the middle o' the blossoms an' leaves an' toothsome plenty—was a white cake with one wee white taper burnin' as bright an' bold as ever a candle twice ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... melancholy silence, Scholastique left her old wooden chair, fixed a taper on the end of a candlestick, lit it, and placed it near a small waxen Virgin, sheltered in her niche of stone. It was the family custom to kneel before this protecting Madonna of the domestic hearth, and to beg her kindly watchfulness during the coming ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... you never will, if you listen to our old-fashioned friend next door, who has been halting between two opinions all his life:—will neither make an honest fat lump of it, as I do, nor plunge down and taper with you. But nothing can be done without an effort: ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... chain fell with a rattle, and gripping his bag tightly, he walked into a large ill-smelling hall of which he could only just see the ceiling. There was no light but the nickering taper held by the man, and by its uncertain glimmer Shorthouse turned to examine him. He saw an undersized man of middle age with brilliant, shifting eyes, a curling black beard, and a nose that at once proclaimed him a ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... in love—put out My senses, leave me deaf and blind, Swept by the tempest of your love, A taper in a ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... lighted. It was broken, as if someone had stepped upon the larger end; but the label, a bright red band of paper, was still upon it. The wrapper had somewhat spread; but the pointed end had been bitten off, half an inch up on the taper. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... evidently betokened the crisis of the show. And indeed the chapters of canons, the clergy and bishops, the pages and chamberlains, the representatives of the city, and the gentlemen of the king's chamber now appeared, and finally the king himself, who, bare-headed and carrying a taper, followed the magnificent statue of the Virgin. The contrast was striking: after the grey-headed monks and pale novices came brilliant young captains, affronting heaven with the points of their moustaches, riddling the latticed windows with killing glances, following the procession in an absent-minded ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sailors, Irishmen, Hessian boots, little boys, beadles, policemen, tall life-guardsmen, charity children, pumps, dustmen, very short pantaloons, dandies in spectacles, and ladies with aquiline noses, remarkably taper waists, and wonderfully long ringlets, Mr. Cruikshank has a special predilection. The tribe of Israelites he has studied with amazing gusto; witness the Jew in Mr. Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," and the immortal Fagin of "Oliver Twist." Whereabouts lies the comic vis in these ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... passage she stopped to open a door and, putting her finger to her lip, signed to Undine to enter. In the taper-lit dimness stood two small white beds, each surmounted by a crucifix and a palm branch, and each containing a small brown sleeping child with a mop of hair and a curiously finished little face. As the Princess stood gazing on their innocent slumbers she seemed ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... noises in the house, and looking through a crack in the flooring he saw the charcoal-burner asleep, his wife almost in a faint, and by the side of the newly-born babe three old women dressed in white, each holding a lighted taper in her hand, and all talking together. Now these were the three Soudiche or ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... booke giuen, him. The Exorcistes, serued to commaunde euille sprites oute of menne, and in token therof, had a lesse booke giuen them. The Acholite, had the bearyng and the orderyng of the Tapers, Candelstickes, and Cruettes at the Altare: and therfore had a Candelsticke, a Taper, and two emptie Cruorettes deliuered hym. The Subdeacon, mighte take the offring, and handle the Chalice, and the Patine, carie theim to the Altare, and fro the Altare, and giue the Deacon Wine ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... fan-shaped into a great oval of green and gray growths. It was the hub of an oblong wheel, and from it, at regular distances, like spokes, ran the outgoing canyons. Here a dull red color predominated over the fading yellow. The corners of wall bluntly rose, scarred and scrawled, to taper into towers and serrated ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... had been put out, and the gloom of the room was only lightened by a single bed-room taper, which, as it stood near the door, only served to render palpable the darkness of the further end of the chamber. For half an hour Lord Cashel walked to and fro, anxious, wretched, and in doubt, instead of going to his room. How he wished that Lord Ballindine ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... shapely enough, but disfigured with sundry scars and bruises inflicted by hammer and chisel. Her look of pride in her wounds was comically in contrast to her companion's distress, as his glance wandered from the little hard-worked fingers to his own white hands,— almond-nailed, soft-palmed, taper-fingered, the hands of a man who has lived an idle life, and known little or nothing of the reality of work. Nan's eyes followed his, and she laughed in amused fashion. "Mine look like the man's, and yours like the woman's! The contrast makes mine browner ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the calcination of the mercury in this experiment, and which was reduced to 5/6 of its former bulk, was no longer fit either for respiration or for combustion; animals being introduced into it were suffocated in a few seconds, and when a taper was plunged into it, it was extinguished as if it had ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... of a wondering smile flickered over the old man's wrinkled countenance, like the reflection of a passing taper-flame ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... derivations from the Minoan and Mycenaean columns seems most improbable. There are two essential parts in the Doric column, the shaft and the capital (the Greeks did not use any base for this order). The Minoan columns taper downwards instead of upwards, an utterly unconstructional form, and though in the palace of Knossos and at Tiryns columns of this shape appear to have been used to carry lintels, the stone columns on either side of the entrance to the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae were used for decorative ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... that once My Lady had eliminated herself from my field I did not see but that Daniel and I might taper off into at least an armed neutrality. If he continued to nag me, it would be wholly of his own free will. He had ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... there; and janet's replying that she had been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I wore; and when I was left there, with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five minutes, I heard them lock my door on the outside. Turning these things over in my mind I deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know nothing ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the guilty; therefore He was the companion of outcasts; therefore He spoke tenderly and lovingly to those whom society counted undone; therefore He loved to bind up the bruised and the broken-hearted; therefore His breath fanned the spark which seemed dying out in the wick of the expiring taper, when men thought that it was too late, and that the hour of hopeless profligacy was come. It was that feature in His character, that tender, hoping, encouraging spirit of His which the prophet Isaiah fixed upon as characteristic. "A bruised reed ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... of those artificial helps are summed up by the Jesuit And. Schottus. I remember that Monsieur Huygens (author of the pendulum), who brought up the learned father of that incomparable youth Monsieur de Zulichem, who used to prescribe to me the benefit of his little wax taper (a type whereof is, with the history of it, in some of our Registers) for night elucubrations, preferable to all other candle or lamp light whatsoever. And because it explodes all glaring of the flame, which by no means ought to dart upon the eyes, it seems very ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... her excellent defence) of convicting her of witchcraft, and confederating with her lover to destroy him. He then attacked her on the weak side of frailty. This was undeniable. He consigned her to the severity of the church: she was carried to the bishop's palace, clothed in a white sheet, with a taper in her hand, and from thence conducted to the cathedral, and the cross, before which she made a confession of her only fault. Every other virtue bloomed in this ill-fated fair with the fullest vigour. She could not resist the solicitations ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... wine are going on. Another flight of steps leads to the second tier of cellars, where the moisture trickles down the dank dingy walls, and save the dim light thrown out by the candles we carried, and by some other far-off flickering taper stuck in a cleft stick to direct the workmen, who with dexterous turns of their wrists give a twist to the bottles, all is darkness. On every side bottles are reposing in various attitudes, the majority in huge square piles on their sides, others in racks slightly tilted, others, again, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... don't let's fool ourselves!" she interrupted his protest impatiently. "Weeks ago, weeks ago!—we said that we would see each other less, that it would taper off. We tried. It's no use! If we were in different cities—in different families, even! I tell myself that it will grow less and less," she added presently, as the man watched her in silence, "but oh, my God!—how long the ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... intervals of uninterrupted intercourse with his mother had implanted in his heart. Then, when the daylight began to wane, and the moon and stars already grew beautiful in their places in the firmament, he would pass into the subterranean vaults of the edifice, trembling as his little taper scarcely dispelled the dull, solemn gloom, and listening with breathless attention for the voices of those guardian spirits whose fabled habitation was made in the apartments of the sacred place. Or, when the multitude had departed for their amusements and their homes, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... dark," Spear lighted a taper and they softly opened the door. Benito slept; beside him drowsed a red-shirted miner slumped upon a chair. Adrian shook him, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... wife Jocasta. It was extraordinarily popular, as, indeed, were all the plays Mrs. Behn marshalls forth in this preface. The scene particularly referred to is Act ii, I: 'Oedipus enters, walking asleep in his Shirt, with a Dagger in his Right-Hand and a Taper in his Left.' A little after 'Enter Jocasta, attended with Lights, in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... (pl. VII, 1 and 2), so called because of their shape. Their bases are triangular and hollowed out; their sides taper upwards and terminate in points which are bent slightly backwards, and they have each two projections, one pointing forwards (pl. VII, 3) and the other outwards and backwards (pl. VII, 4). It will be convenient to have a special name for the projections pointing outwards ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... pillars, low at the sides of the rooms, and up to sixty feet in the middle. These are all gilt, and show "architectural refinements," for the teak trees they are made of are not absolutely straight, and they have an entasis that is quite natural where they taper away into the golden gloom of the sloping timber roofs. The rooms are lofty, and all on one floor, because the Burmese do not like to live in rooms with people above. There are infinite intricacies of gilded teak carving, and some ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... had no wish a brother's love to share"— I did not read thy features dreamingly, And peer into thine eye's deep azure, there Searching another's depths, in revery! I did not press, all passionless, thy hand Or idly dally with thy taper finger, Or coldly gaze, for I could not withstand The high and holy ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... of a length most happily proportioned to their thickness; these we saw at Athens; but when they were cut anew at Rome and polished, they did not gain so much in embellishment, as they lost in symmetry, being rendered too taper and slender. Should any one who wonders at the costliness of the Capitol visit any one gallery in Domitian's palace, or hall, or bath, or the apartments of his concubines, Epicharmus's ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... are sweet peas on tiptoe for a flight: With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, And taper fingers catching at all things To bind them ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... it has somewhat deteriorated; and, as now grown, differs to some extent from the description given above. The roots are smaller, seldom rise more than two or three inches above the soil, and taper directly from the crown to the point. A judicious selection of roots for seed, continued for a few seasons, would undoubtedly restore the variety to ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... finished, I folded it up, and lighted a taper to seal it. Old Mrs Culpepper, who was in the room, croaked out, "No, no; you must show it to Medea." But I paid no attention to her, and having sealed my letter, put on my hat, and walked out to the post-office. I dropped it into ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... lagoon lies a man-of-war, its sails neatly furled, and its trim rigging, dark hull, and taper spars, perfectly reproduced in ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... soul; now that he had his secret shared, and some hope in front of him, he seemed like a new man, his feet went lightly on the earth, and his breath was good to him again. Yet was terror still at his elbow; and ever and again, as the wind blows out a taper, hope died in him, and he saw the flames toss and the red fire burn ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and stept to her closet, methought she let fall the wax taper in her return; and then [O metamorphosis still stranger than the former! what unaccountable things are dreams!] coming to bed again in the dark, the young lady, to her infinite astonishment, grief, and surprise, found mother H. turned into a young ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... "Where is she, She I love these many years?" He heard no echo calling faintly: "Lo, she lieth cold and pale, And her smile so calm and saintly Heeds not grieving sob or wail— Heeds not the lilies strewn upon her, Pure as she is, and as white, Or the solemn chanting voices, Or the taper's ghastly light." But silent still was the ancient forest, Silent were the gloomy trees, He only heard the wailing sound Of the summer breeze, That sadly played ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... there be (of London visitants) that find it. The still small voice is surely to be found there, if any where. A sounding board is merely there for ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for 'twould feel a mountain thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm would. Go and see, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... carefully. In Noel Vanstone's close, cramped handwriting, it filled two pages of letter-paper, and ended at the top of the third page. Instead of using an envelope, Mrs. Lecount folded it, neatly and securely, in the old-fashioned way. She lit the taper in the ink-stand, and returned the letter ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... ancient coins being jocularly supposed to prevent him from visiting that place, for fear, as it is said, of breaking his shins against it. To hold a candle to the Devil; to be civil to any one out of fear: in allusion to the story of the old woman, who set a wax taper before the image of St. Michael, and another before the Devil, whom that saint is commonly represented as trampling under his feet: being reproved for paying such honour to Satan, she answered, as it was uncertain which place she should go to, heaven or ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... already dismissed his attendants, and in a mood of deep dejection he was standing before a large mirror; a taper was burning dimly beside him. There was a gentle tap at his door. Undine used to tap thus when she wanted playfully to tease him "It is all fancy," said he to himself; "I must seek my ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... on that joyous day would have been complete had his mother been present, when in the presence of the old priest who had instructed Adrienne in her catechism, Sulpice stood forward and took by its velvet shield the taper that seemed so light to him, and awkwardly held the wafer that the priest extended to him. It was a great event in Grenoble when the leader of the Liberal Party, who headed the list at the last election, was seen being married like a believing bourgeois. The organ pealed forth ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... the lead with a lighted taper. Of course, when he was well inside the small flame gave a very pale glow; but those behind could see it. Then Lance followed with another light at about the middle of the Indian file, and Otto Sitz brought up ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... my face is thin, my mind is firmly fixed So to fire my golden buds that they shall excel all beside, But how know I, who'll put them in jewelled cup? Whose taper fingers will leisurely give them to the ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... about eight or ten feet above ground, and the under part of the floor, closed with bamboos, is used as a store: I descended. Anyone who could have seen me—a white man, a European, the child of another hemisphere—wander by night, with a taper in my hand, about the hut of a Tinguian Indian, would have been really surprised at my audacity, and I may almost say, my obstinacy, in seeking out danger while pursuing the wonderful and unknown. But I went on, without reflecting on the strangeness of my conduct: as the Indians say: "I was ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... the trackless heath, at midnight seen, No more the windows ranged in long array (Where the tall shaft and fretted arch between Thick ivy twines) the taper'd rites betray. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... his big bed in the middle of the library. The blinds were drawn up to the tops of the long, narrow windows, that the last gleam of light might enter, but the room was full of shadows, save where a taper flickered on a small table which held ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... accomplished, and who had queened it so well at the Chateau d'Anzy, now condescending to household cares and sewing for the coming infant, moved the poor lawyer, who had just left the bench. And as he saw the pricks on one of the taper fingers he had so often kissed, he understood that Madame de la Baudraye was not merely playing at ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... there is a small wood called Losel's, of a few acres, that was lately furnished with a set of oaks of a peculiar growth and great value; they were tall and taper-like firs, but standing near together had very small heads, only a little brush without any large limbs. About twenty years ago the bridge at the Toy, near Hampton Court, being much decayed, some trees were wanted for the repairs that were fifty feet long without bough, and would ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... says, 'The young heifers of North Devon, with their taper legs, the exact symmetry of their form, and their clear coats of dark red, are pictures of elegance.' Their superiority for grazing and draught was proved by the high prices demanded for them, but they were not equally esteemed as dairy animals,[749] though of late years this ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... presence of Miss Dale illuminated him as the burning taper lights up consecrated plate. Deeply respecting her for her constancy, esteeming her for a model of taste, he was never in her society without that happy consciousness of shining which calls forth the treasures of the man; and these it is no exaggeration to term unbounded, when all ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "Out went the taper as she hurried in; Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died: She closed the door, she panted, all akin To spirits of the air and visions wide: No utter'd syllable, or woe betide! But to her heart, her heart was voluble, Paining with eloquence her balmy side; As though ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... eyes then in exhaustion, and fell into a doze, so that she appeared to be dead. And her master and mistress remained there a little while, by the faint light of a taper, watching with great compassion that admirable mother, who, for the sake of saving her family, had come to die six thousand miles from her country, to die after having toiled so hard, poor woman! and she was so honest, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... playing a grand game of "round ball," for it was a half-holiday. The clear, silvery tones of the bell were heard, and we stopped to listen. Was it a fire? No, the ringing was not vehement enough. A meeting of the church? In a moment we should know. As the bell ceased, we looked up to the white taper spire to catch the next sound. One stroke. It was a death, then,—and of a man. We listened for the age tolled from the belfry. Fifty-five. Who had departed? The sexton crossed the green on his way to the shop to make the coffin, and informed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... battle when you came to pull my walls of strength down about my ears. Look! On my desk is a letter I was writing to you. No; you shall not read it! No one shall ever know what it contains." She darted to the desk, snatched up the sheets of paper and held them over the waxed taper. He stood in the middle of the room, a feeling of intense desolation settling down upon him. How could he ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... was but the light of a wax taper flickering over it; the strange, solemn beauty of that serene brow and ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... mid-July; she had chanced to meet Melusine there, and the two had embraced as sisters should. It is to be owned that her adoption by Charles Street had restored her credit with her family more certainly than any white sheet and taper which she could have supported would have done. Her mother was highly gratified, though she affected a shrug when good Mr. Percival, in the simplicity of his heart, overflowed with the joy of it. "Sancie in Berkeley Square—where Lord Rosebery lives: think of that, my dear!" And Mrs. Percival, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... a letter, blew out the candle which had enabled him to do so, and exchanging a look with Wordsworth, began to admire in silence the undulating thread of smoke which slowly arose from the expiring wick, when Crabbe put on the extinguisher. Anne laughed at the instance, and inquired if the taper was wax; and being answered in the negative, seemed to think that there was no call on Mr. Crabbe to sacrifice his sense of smell to their admiration of beautiful and evanescent forms. In two other men I should have said, 'Why, it is affectations,' with Sir Hugh Evans ['Merry Wives of ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the sea blew in, which bent back the flame of the taper in his hand, and then across the threshold stepped the youngest son. He was still a sailor and clad in sailor blue, and there was a cutlass in his belt. So shaken with joy was the merchant that for some time he could ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... letters, mamma, you know. They are not like your wax taper at all; they are little wax matches, that burn just long enough to seal one or two letters; Miss Allen showed me how she used them. Hers were in a nice little box just like the inkstand on the outside; ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... approached, and supposed to be an attendant on the other, was below the middle size, and her legs were so disproportionably short, that, when she moved, she must have waddled along; her elbows were drawn in to touch her long taper, waist, and the air of her whole body was an affectation of gentility. Death could not alter the rigid hang of her limbs, or efface the simper that had stretched her mouth; the lips were thin, as if nature intended she should mince her words; her nose was small, and sharp ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... farther door with quivering lips, or sighed when it opened, and emitted merely a councillor or a marquis. Several times a masked lady flitted through the crowd, with a bow here and the honour of her taper fingers there. The windows were open, the summer air entered; and the murmur of the throng without, mingling with the stir of talk within, seemed to add to the light and colour of ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... choristers were singing Miserere before the high altar when I went in. There was no congregation but a few old women on chairs and old men kneeling on the pavement. After a while a long train of young girls, walking two and two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed in black with a white veil, came from behind the altar, and began to descend the nave; the four first carrying a Virgin and child upon a table. The priests and choristers arose from their knees and followed ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was performed I carried the taper (nota bene) and some pieces of gold to the Bishop who performed the grand mass, and who was sitting in an arm-chair near the altar. The prelate intended to have given them to his assistants, the priests of the King's chapel; but the ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... guides of conduct, and virtue is indeed a superstition if life ends at the grave. This is the conclusion which the philosophy of negation must accept at last. Such is the felicity of those degrading precepts which make the epitaph the end. If the life of Burnes is as a taper that is burned out then we treasure his memory and his example in vain, and the latest prayer of his departing spirit has no more sanctity to us, who soon or late must follow him, than the whisper of winds that stir the leaves of ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... back look for look he seemed incapable of continuing. But she turned away, somewhat confused, and slowly he continued: "One time I discovered that in us all there is a secret temple, with a very small but highly prized altar lighted by a tiny taper flame, where we keep just our own little treasures—our wonderful selves." She glanced up in some surprise, but this time he was staring at the ground. "In some, its door is studiously, carefully locked; in others, its paths of approach are overgrown with weeds and almost ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Isabel away. Her sobs were not to be borne. And very soon she felt Antonia's white face and silent companionship to be just as unendurable. She would be alone. Not even Rachela would she have near her. She put out all the lights but the taper above a large crucifix, and at its foot she sat down in tearless abandon, alone with ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... bright gem, The glance whereof to others had been more, Than to thy famish'd mind the wide world's store: So wretched is it to be merely rich! Witness thy youth's dear sweets here spent untasted, Like a fair taper, with his ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... hands were about three times as large and coarse as those of the boy who had carried the thrush before, but they seemed to him three times more light and tender—they were handy and kind, and this goes farther than taper fingers. ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... or so thought the lad. He had no money to spend, and little but pain for his holiday-cheer. A patch here and there in his worn clothes was the best present his thrifty mother was able to make; always excepting the little variegated taper, which few were ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... hieroglyphics perhaps, or the papyrus that they wrapped round mummies. Personally, Beatrix is one of those blondes beside whom Eve the fair would seem a Negress. She is slender and straight and white as a church taper; her face is long and pointed; the skin is capricious, to-day like cambric, to-morrow darkened with little speckles beneath its surface, as if her blood had left a deposit of dust there during the night. Her forehead is magnificent, though rather daring. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... had been placed by her own hands in the upper part of the bag, so that the books should not weigh on them, and had been carefully protected by wrappings of cotton wool. Taking them out, one by one, Herbert found a delicate china candlestick (intended to hold a wax taper) broken into two pieces, in spite of the care that had been taken to preserve it. Of no great value in itself, old associations made the candlestick precious to Sydney. It had been broken at the stem and ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... the heartless young matron as she graciously extended the tips of her taper fingers and smiled her most enchanting smile which the young gallant more than graciously acknowledged as he sprang into the cab awaiting him at the ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... which the ecclesiastical changes wrought in the sixteenth century have left us. Prior to the Reformation there were sub-deacons who wore alb and maniple, acolytes, the tokens of whose office were a taper staff and small pitcher, ostiaries or doorkeepers corresponding to our verger or clerk, readers, exorcists, rectores chori, etc. This full staff would, of course, be not available for every country church, and for such parishes a clerk and a ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... practice to give him any hard, unyielding substance, as it tends to harden the gums, and, by so doing, causes the teeth to come through with greater difficulty. I have found softer substances, such as either a piece of wax taper, or an India-rubber ring, or a piece of the best bridle leather, or a crust of bread, of great service. If a piece of crust be given as a gum-stick, he must, while biting it, be well watched, or by accident he might loosen a large ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... twinkling taper's gleam, Her bed she seeks, of me to dream, But ere she sleeps she kneels to pray For one ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... her desk, and lighting a taper, tied and sealed the packet; then she opened the wardrobe, drew out a despatch-box, and deposited the letters within it. As she did so, it struck her with a flash of irony that she was indebted to Gus Trenor for the means of ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... —that you may look in vain for verification of ethnological assertions.... No: the heel does not protrude;—the foot is not flat, but finely arched;—the extremities are not large;—all the limbs taper, all the muscles are developed; and prognathism has become so rare that months of research may not yield a single striking case of it.... No: this is a special race, peculiar to the island as are the shapes of its peaks,—a mountain race; and mountain races are comely.... ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the trees, Where first our marriage-vows were given, With merry peals shall swell the breeze And point with taper spire to Heaven. ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... wonderful full moon shone down upon them with a marvellous lustre, and there was a pleasant air, soft and warm, from the forest, and, what with the scores of bright waxen tapers that stood in silver candlesticks upon the table (each taper sparkling as bright as any star), the night was made all illuminate like to some singular mid-day. There was set before them a plenty of divers savory meats and of several excellent wines, some as yellow as gold, and some as red as carbuncle, and they ate and they drank and ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... spar on which you have been perched whilst gazing so dreamily over the ship's quarter, give the last half of your grog to the old lad at the wheel, peep in on the compass, find she heads about west-north-west, and, well satisfied, descend the stair. The steward lights the waxen taper which fixes on a branch before your glass; when, having performed such ceremonies as you delight in, thank God and sleep: and thus ends the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... soft, alluring. The tower is pale, almost ethereal, at the end of the vista. Its great clock, pricked out with golden lamps, seems scarce a third of the way up its side. The white walls rise on, and on, with here and there a spot of gold, and taper into nothing. They are lost in the gloom of coming night. But still they must go on, for far aloft you see the lantern glowing like a star, hung between earth and heaven. In this twilight hour of blue and gold the tower is the mighty guardian spirit of the scene, sending down sonorous word of the ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... by the Hindoos and freely used at their religious ceremonies. Its leaves are very long and taper to a needle-like point. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... dissipated such a sum of money, for the treasury of the Beat-al-mal, or charity fund, is intended to afford mouthfuls to the poor, and not bellyfuls to the imps of the devil.—That fool who can illuminate the day with a camphorated taper must soon feel a want of oil ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Anastasia was just as beautiful. In the middle of the floor stood a coffin filled with roses. "The Lord Christ is pictured there in the form of a beautiful rose," said my mother; and the priest announced, "Christ is risen!" All the people kissed each other: each one had a burning taper in his hand, and I received one myself, and so did little Anastasia. The bagpipes sounded, men danced hand in hand from the church, and outside the women were roasting the Easter lamb. We were invited to partake, and I sat by the fire; a boy, ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... a man of simple mind, Gamaliel Nibbs by name, Whose early faith in human kind Burned like a Vestal flame; No wind of doubt that stirs the dust Fluttered that bright and constant taper; But oh, he had his dearest trust Pinned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... and took the copper taper stands, one in either hand, and held them aloft. But first he placed his long dagger, not back in his belt, but between his teeth with the handle towards his right hand. Even then in some strange fashion I noted how terrible ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... presently a candle is fixed by an attendant sprite,—the slave of the tallow candle,—and the wand, so to speak, tapers off towards the handle. A propos of "tapers off"—the question occurs to me, later on, as we pass through labyrinths of dark passages, where should I be in the case of "taper off"? Beautiful title for sensational story—"Lost in ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... of which Tito spoke were a part of the procession esteemed very glorious by the Florentine populace; and being perhaps chiefly a kind of hyperbole for the all-efficacious wax taper, were also called ceri. But inasmuch as hyperbole is impracticable in a real and literal fashion, these gigantic ceri, some of them so large as to be of necessity carried on wheels, were not solid but hollow, and had their surface made not solely of wax, but of wood and pasteboard, gilded, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... might be in one; but because the stem and stern ought to be strong, this whole line is made of two small trees lashed together with the thick ends outwards, as in fig. 1, where AB is a lithe clean little willow-tree, and ab another similar one. They are lashed together at their taper ends. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... on this festival. Mass was performing in several of the splendid chapels, whose rich decorations of paintings and sculpture are but once a year revealed to the light, save from the obscure glimmering of the wax-taper, which is carried by the guide, to occasional visitors. It is astonishing what a vast amount of expense is here ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... high, and all are very graceful, this species being considered the most beautiful of the numerous birch family. The leaves, which are just coming out, are two or three inches long and about half as wide; they taper to a point and have serrate, or sawlike, edges. The wood is firm and durable, and is much used for cattle-yokes as well as for bedsteads and chairs. The large trees yield a great quantity of sweetish sap, ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... life at every pore—a thousand merry figures come to meet you: maidens clad in the gay costumes of the elder time, all fluttering with ribbons, rosy cheeks and lips!—maidens who smile, and with their taper fingers point at those who follow them; gay shepherds, gallant in silk stockings and embroidered doublets, carrying their crooks wreathed round with flowers; while over all, the sun laughs gladly, and the breezes bear away the merry voices, sprinkling on the air ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... one spark Of pity in that steel-grey glance which gleamed At the poor hoof's protesting as it stamped Idly the granite? Let me glide unseen From thy proud presence: well may'st thou be queen Of all those strange and sudden deaths which damped So oft Love's torch and Hymen's taper lit For happy marriage till the maidens paled And perished on the temple-step, assailed By—what except to envy must man's wit Impute that sure implacable release Of life from warmth and ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... shape of Feliu, making for the beach—a broad and bearded silhouette, bending against the wind. Still the waxen Virgin smiled her Mexican smile,—but now she was only seven inches high; and her bead-glass eyes seemed to twinkle with kindliness while the flame of the last expiring taper struggled for life in the earthen socket ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... upon the tippet. His beard and moustache were the pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is brimful, how the taper flame shines, Which, when moisture is wanting, decays; Replenish the lamp of my life with rich wines, Or else there's an end of my blaze, ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... on my fingers and a chastened look of woe on my clear-cut Grecian features, I might have poured No. 1 hard wheat and buckwheat flour out of my long taper ears every night, if I had stuck to the profession. Still, as I say, it was for another man's best good that I resigned. The head miller had no control over himself and the proprietor had rather set his heart on my resignation, so it was ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... came a sudden burst Of high-pitched fairy horn-calls, like the first, But nearer, clearer, deadlier than before, Blown seemingly from just outside the door. The casements shook, the taper lights all trembled; The bravest knight's dismay was ill-dissembled; And as all sprang with one accord to win Their swords and shields, stern combat to begin, The great doors shot their bolts, ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... the tippet. His beard and moustache were the pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's women; the fork of the thumb made a dimple protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable, that a man with hands like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is surely to be found there, if any where. A sounding board is merely there for ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more from sanctity than size, for 'twould feel a mountain thrown upon it no more than a taper-worm would. Go and see, but not ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... at their ease, and the whirr of the lathe slept not; the latter was all patterns, tapes, hooks and eyes, whalebone, cuttings of muslin, poplin and paper; clouds of lining-muslin, snakes of piping; skeins, shreds; and the floor literally sown with pins, escaped from the fingers of the fair, those taper fingers so typical of the minds of their owners: or they have softness, suppleness, nimbleness, adroitness, and "a plentiful ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... paschal candle which was lit on Easter Eve and burnt until Ascension Day. The kindling of this light was carried out in a very ceremonious manner as enjoined in Lanfranc's statutes. A fire was made in the cloister and duly consecrated, and the monks, having lit a taper at this fire carried it on the end of a staff in solemn procession, singing psalms and hymns and burning incense, and lit the paschal candle in the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... Lord Ferdinand, Is come to visit you, and sends you word, 'Cause once he rashly made a solemn vow Never to see you more, he comes i' th' night; And prays you gently neither torch nor taper Shine in your chamber. He will kiss your hand, And reconcile himself; but for his vow He dares not ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... a melancholy silence, Scholastique left her old wooden chair, fixed a taper on the end of a candlestick, lit it, and placed it near a small waxen Virgin, sheltered in her niche of stone. It was the family custom to kneel before this protecting Madonna of the domestic hearth, and to beg her kindly watchfulness ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... seconds, then, in about a hundred and sixty is the whole range of the maxima of the present race of trotting horses. The same thing is seen in the running of men. Many can run a mile in five minutes; but when one comes to the fractions below, they taper down until somewhere about 4.30 the maximum is reached. Averages of masses have been studied more than averages of maxima and minima. We know from the Registrar-General's Reports, that a certain number of children—say from one to two dozen—die every year ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... case—the five letters. How splendid that month seemed whose skies had beheld the rising of these five stars! It was always at night I visited them, and not daring to ask every evening for a candle in the kitchen, I bought a wax taper and matches to light it, and at the study-hour stole up to the dormitory and feasted on my crust from the Barmecide's loaf. It did not nourish me: I pined on it, and got as thin as a shadow: otherwise I ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... increases in diameter the bundles become broader and broader toward the outside, and taper to a point toward the centre, appearing wedge-shaped, the inner ends projecting into the pith. The outer limits of the bundles are not nearly so distinct, and it is not easy to tell when the phloem of the bundles ends and the ground ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... together and melts them into one glowing and glorious conception of the God of power, wisdom and love. But even then the heart whispers: "He is that, and infinitely more than that, even as the sun is more than the little taper man has made." But if the reason and memory, through misuse, furnish but few of the truths about God, and if the imagination has been weakened in its power, then how poor the picture ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... With her skirts gathered up in a listless arm till they were unbecomingly abridged, with every muscle and fiber seeming to sag like an ill-supported fence, Fran's thoughts were at the abysmal stage of discouragement. For a time, there seemed in her heart not the tiniest taper alight, and in this blackness, both hope and failure ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... minstrelsy. In the dear bower of delight My husband slept in joy; His shield and spear Suspended near, Secure he slept: that sailor band Full sure he deem'd no more should stand Beneath the walls of Troy. And I too, by the taper's light, Which in the golden mirror's haze Flash'd its interminable rays, Bound up the tresses of my hair, That I Love's peaceful ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... necessary select two good 20-foot pieces, 3 inches wide and 1 1/2 inches thick, and one 10-foot long, of the same thickness and width. Plane off the bottom sides of the 10-foot strip, beginning about two feet back from each end, and taper them so the strip will be about 3/4 inch thick at the extreme ends. Lay the two 20-foot beams end to end, and under the joint thus made place the 10-foot strip, with the planed-off ends downward. The joint of the 20-foot ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... determined its altitude; Herr Spider measured its circumference at the base and computed the circumference at its top by a mathematical demonstration based upon the warrant furnished by the uniform degree of its taper upward. It was considered a very extraordinary find; and since it was a tree of a hitherto unknown species, Professor Woodlouse gave it a name of a learned sound, being none other than that of Professor Bull Frog translated ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... been compelled to reaffirm that Great Charter which his father had unwillingly granted at Runnymede (S198). Standing in St. Catherine's Chapel within the partially finished church of Westminster Abbey (S207), Henry, holding a lighted taper in his hand, in company with the chief men of the realm, swore to observe ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... bright expectancy of her face. He had said he would come, and now——She drums in a heavy-hearted listless fashion on the table with the tips of her pale gloves, and noticing, half consciously in so doing, that they have not been sufficiently drawn up her arm, mechanically fits them closer to the taper fingers. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... our pursuers, first one raised a mast and a long taper yard, then another, and they were soon under all sail standing after us. The breeze increased; we gave a cheer, hoping soon to get well ahead of them. Still on they came, and it seemed very doubtful whether we should succeed. I believe that some of the crew would rather have had a fight ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... than the roar of wild beasts, and the hour had come now in which he must think of his own safety, for the river of fire was flowing nearer and nearer from the direction of the island, and rolls of smoke covered the alley almost completely. The taper which he carried was quenched from the current of air. Vinicius rushed to the street, and ran at full speed toward the Via Portuensis, whence he had come; the fire seemed to pursue him with burning breath, now surrounding him with fresh clouds of smoke, now covering him with sparks, which fell ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... of attaining to it. Man works from ignorance towards greater knowledge with very limited powers. His little circle of light is surrounded by a wall of darkness, which he strives to penetrate and lighten, now groping blindly on its verge, now advancing his taper light and peering forward; yet unable to go far, and even afraid to venture, in case he should ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... with three horses saddled and equipped for the journey. The company were quickly mounted on three spirited horses, and reached Cherry Valley at eleven o'clock P. M.—a place Nelly had never seen before. No cottage window showed the light of a taper; but the light of the full moon fell in tranquil loveliness upon the rounded hill-tops, and the glittering stars added their beauty to the heavens, while the green forest and flowering shrubbery clothed the earth with beauty, ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... of us learns wisdom in these matters? The Naik soon comes to feel that if justice were done to merit, he would be a Havildar. After he has attained that proud distinction, he retires to "husband out life's taper at its close" in the same old hut, amidst the same conglomerate of relations, but nephews and nieces, and grandchildren have taken the place of uncles and aunts and parents. The buffalo and the pariah dog are apparently the same. Then the whole range of official machinery ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... will the unseen forces had conquered. And then she wondered if the water had been very cold, and shivered and drew herself together. And it must have been horribly dark. Harriet was afraid of the dark, and always had burned a taper at night. ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... horizon of our best desires Stretches into the sunset of our lives: The wavering taper of the achieved expires, And only the irrevocable will survives. Content to die for England! How the words Thrill those who live for England, knowing not The stern, heroic passion that upgirds The loins of such as, ardent, for her fought. Content! It is a word that ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... could she, she would Have cradled as the Baby of her Eye. In Rose and Musk she wash'd him—to his Lips Press'd the pure Sugar from the Honeycomb; And when, Day over, she withdrew her Milk, She made, and having laid him in, his Bed, Burn'd all Night like a Taper o'er his Head. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... worthies, stood a large pitcher of iced water; a square case-bottle of cut crystal filled, as the flavor which pervaded the whole room sufficiently demonstrated, with superb old Antigua Shrub; several large rummers corresponding to the fashion of the bottle; a twisted taper of green wax, and a small silver plate with six or ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... those of nature, which alone is to be blamed; unless we are to join in the blame the ministers who placed such a twinkling taper as a "shining light" in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... with three others to assist, and in another minute or two the end of the tall taper stick was dropped into the hole and fixed there. A hole had been already bored in the top and a rope rove through it, to which Lumley soon attached the corners of a small ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... in acquiring weight; and the evenings in the best companies at Rome, in acquiring lustre. A formal, dull father, would recommend to you to plod out the evenings, too, at home, over a book by a dim taper; but I recommend to you the evenings for your pleasures, which are as much a part of your education, and almost as necessary a one, as your morning studies. Go to whatever assemblies or SPECTACLES people of fashion go to, and when you are there do as they do. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... was led by a priest, bearing the banner of the church, and followed by two boys, holding long flambeaux in their hands. Next came a double file of priests in their surplices, with a missal in one hand and a lighted wax taper in the other, chanting the funeral dirge at intervals—now pausing, and then again taking up the mournful burden of their lamentation, accompanied by others, who played upon a rude kind of bassoon, with a dismal ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... a wax candle, shedding its white light over the sharp features of the corpse. Moll Doyle was not to be put down by the Captain, whom she hated, and accordingly, in her phrase, "he got as good as he gave." And the Captain's wrath waxed fiercer, and he chucked the wax taper from the dead hand, and was on the point of flinging it at ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... pale; and he was slender in form, and delicate in appearance. He had been sick, and even now, he was not quite well. His little taper fingers rested upon the window-sill, while his grandmother opened her little Bible and began to read. Caleb sat still in her lap, with a serious and attentive expression ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... so soon as the door had closed behind the three, and Raymond had coaxed the dim taper into its feeble flicker — "Father, we have come to thee for counsel — for help. Father, chide us not, nor call us ingrate; but it has come to this with us — we can no longer brook this tame and idle life. We are not of the peasant stock; ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... one chance human body that is brought in to land, and the long spur, from which man's dancing cordage wastes by degrees, find yields its place to long, green streamers, much like those that clung to this tall, taper tree when it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... having been faintly tinged with rouge, the locks parted, perfumed, and curled, the waist duly compressed, a slight addition, if necessary, made to the breadth of the hips, and the feet confined by the most taper and diminutive chausserie imaginable), will just serve to give to the tout ensemble that one touch of the masculine character which, perhaps, it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... for the beach—a broad and bearded silhouette, bending against the wind. Still the waxen Virgin smiled her Mexican smile,—but now she was only seven inches high; and her bead-glass eyes seemed to twinkle with kindliness while the flame of the last expiring taper struggled for life in the earthen ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... sought—the king's letter to Ostermore, and Ostermore's reply, signed and ready for dispatch. "These must be burnt," he said, "and burnt at once, for that fellow Green may return, or he may send others. Call Humphries. Get a taper from him." ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Thereupon he riseth up, for he was weary, and draweth him toward the couch, and the damsels help him and wait upon his going to bed. And when he was lien down, they seated themselves before him and lighted the taper and leant over the couch and prospered him much service. Messire Gawain answered them naught save "Gramercy," for he was minded to ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... he in a vicious whisper. But the other laid his hand on his shoulder and whispered, "Look to the front." He looked, and, his own candle being out, saw a glimmer on ahead. He crept towards it. It was a taper shooting a feeble light across a small aperture. They caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a small apartment. Yet Edouard recognized the carpet of the tapestried room—which was a very large room. Creeping a yard nearer, he discovered that it was the tapestried room, and that what had ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... in her determination, she then takes the black veil, and utters her solemn and irrevocable vows to bury herself in the gloom of the cloister, never again to emerge. From this step there is no return. The throbbing heart, which neither cowls nor veils can still, finds in the taper-lighted cell its living tomb, till it sleeps in death. No one with even an ordinary share of sensibility can witness a ceremony involving such consequences without the deepest emotion. The scene produced an effect upon the spirit of Jane which was never effaced. The wreath of ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... to which he had hitherto devoted his life, he wore, like Milton's Adam, his wavy hair down to his shoulders. In his youth, it had been thick and curling; now it was thinner and straighter, yet curled where it lay. His hands were small, with the taper fingers that indicate the artist, while his thumb was that of the artizan, square at the tip, with the first joint curved a good deal back. That they were hard and something discoloured was not for Dorothy to wonder at, when she remembered what she ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... to the barber's; and, taking out the false key, (which, though made of baser metal, was almost as bright as the original), put it carefully into his waistcoat pocket. He then stopped at an oil and candle shop, and bought a wax taper and a box of matches. "The garden door's safest: I'll chance it with the garden-door," thought Mat, as he sat down in the shaving-shop chair, and ordered the barber ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... senses. The room, newly-whitewashed, was darkened by a green curtain tacked over the frame of the window. Standing near the window were two wooden-stools and a little table, upon which burned the faint light of a small taper, arranged in a cup of oil, and shedding its feeble flickers on the evidences of a sick-chamber. There, on a little, narrow cot, lay the death-like form of his once joyous companion, with the old nurse sitting beside him, watching his last pulsation. Her arm encircled his head, while ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... jewels come back, one by one, ring added to ring on the little taper fingers, the rubies for the neck, and the pendent yellow earrings. Though Lizzie was in mourning for her father, still these things were allowed to be visible. The countess was not the woman to see them without inquiry, and she inquired vigorously. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Her hair, full of curious lights and shades running from brown to gold and gold to brown again, in a rippling uncertain fashion, clustered thickly over her brow and was caught back at the sides in a loose twist after the style of the Greek vestals,—and her fine, small white hands and taper fingers, so skilled in the use of the artist's brush, looked too tiny and delicate to be of any service save to receive the kisses of a lover's lips,—or to be raised, folded pure and calm, in a child-like appeal to Heaven. Certainly in her fragile appearance she expressed nothing ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... gone off," cried the boy, drawing a deep long breath, as he eagerly looked round the deck and up at the rigging of the smart schooner, whose raking taper masts and white canvas gave her quite the look ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... Auks, often lay their eggs on the shelving cliffs exposed to the sweep of the ocean gales. These are shaped as if designed by nature to prevent them rolling off the rocks. They are very large at one {41} end and toward the other taper sharply. When the wind blows they simply swing ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... him with a miserable smile. He stood before her; she lifted off the green silk covering under which the body was lying; and by the dim light of a taper, he saw before him, not without a secret shudder, the stiffened image of himself. Charlotte pointed to a chair, and there they sat opposite each other, without speaking, through the night. Ottilie was still lying motionless on Charlotte's knee; she breathed softly, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... accurate glimpse at the real nature of those events, however they may have been disguised by fiction and misstatement. Where tradition is our only guide we must follow implicitly, satisfied that her taper was lighted at the torch of Truth, though it may gleam doubtfully and partially through the mists and errors of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that he locked his shop and went home, and in the night there came to the bazar an artful thief disguised in the habit of the merchant, and pulling out keys from his sleeve, said to the watchman of the market, "Light me this wax-candle." The watchman took the taper and went to light it,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... health. Seldom was the body followed by even ten or twelve attendants; and instead of the usual bearers and sextons, hirelings of the lowest of the populace undertook the office for the sake of gain; and accompanied by only a few priests, and often without a single taper, it was borne to the very nearest church, and lowered into the first grave that was not already too full to receive it. Among the middling classes, and especially among the poor, the misery was still ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... valuable gold watch, a gold watch chain, 2 gold watch keys, a gold seal, a silver mustard pot and spoon, a silver salt stand, a scent bottle, a china basket, 3 china jugs, a china cup and saucer and mug 2 taper candlesticks, a ring stand, 2 spill cups, a card stand, a lamp, a claret jug, a pair of decanters, 6 hock glasses, 14 claret glasses, 6 finger glasses, and a set of china tea things. The donor has found true ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... into the room at their left showed signs of recent occupancy. His quick survey marked an oil lamp in the corner, which, upon investigation, proved to be in working order, so he lit it with the end of his expiring taper. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... to dwell there in all seasons, Like a taper burning day and night, Near to the child Jesus and the Virgin, In that home ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... of the pandanus they make mats. They have also a kind of wax-nut, about the size of a dried plum of which they make candles by running a stick through several of them. Lighted at one end, they burn like a wax taper, and are the only light they use in their ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... possess'd with double pompe, To guard a Title, that was rich before; To gilde refined Gold, to paint the Lilly; To throw a perfume on the Violet, To smooth the yce, or adde another hew Vnto the Raine-bow; or with Taper-light To seeke the beauteous eye of heauen to garnish, Is ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... love's undershrieve, Why this reprieve? Why doth my she-advowson fly Incumbency? To sell thyself dost thou intend By candle's end, And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Life's taper out? Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; And if, to measure age's span, The sober Julian were th' account of man, Whilst you live by ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... minutes passed in silence, when he returned and held the door open for the bishop of London, who entered, bearing the viaticum, as the last communion of the sick was then called, and attended by an acolyte, who bore a lighted taper before him and ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... remarkable evidence of the trepidation and consternation of the old earl; it arrived in the middle of the night, accompanied by a summons to attend the privy council. In the perusal of a letter written in a small hand, and filling more than two folio pages, such was his agitation, that in holding the taper he must have burnt what he probably had not read; the letter is scorched, and the flame has perforated it in so critical a part, that the poor old earl journeyed to town in a state of uncertainty and confusion. Nor was his terror so unreasonable as it seems. Treason had been a political ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Tobin's Volante, but one fashioned out of her own characteristics; supine, but shapely; heavy, but handsome; slow, but specious. Susan, with hair escaping in roguish curls beneath her little cap; her taper waist encompassed by a page's tunic; the trim contour of her figure frankly revealed by her vestment, was truly a lad "dressed up to cozen" any lover who preferred his friend and his bottle to ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... known that a taper will not burn where carbonic acid exists in any considerable quantity, or when there is a marked deficiency of oxygen. From this originated the judicious practice of sinking a lighted candle into a well ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... taper's gleam, Her bed she seeks, of me to dream, But ere she sleeps she kneels to pray For one who ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... alone in a dimly-lighted apartment of Government-house—dimly-lighted except by the moon, shining in full at the range of windows which overlooked the gardens, so as to make the one lamp upon the table appear like a yellow taper. For most of the long hours that she had sat there, Therese had been alone. Denis had entered, before his departure homewards, to ask what tidings he was to carry to Pongaudin from her. Father Laxabon had twice appeared, to know if ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... I felt you Taper into a point the ruffled ends Of my loose locks 'twixt both your humid lips. My hair is fallen now: knot it ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... occurrence of foliage in the works of the old masters. 384 Sec. 2. Laws common to all forest trees. Their branches do not taper, but only divide. 385 Sec. 3. Appearance of tapering caused by frequent buds. 385 Sec. 4. And care of nature to conceal the parallelism. 386 Sec. 5. The degree of tapering which may be represented as continuous. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... time dissipated such a sum of money, for the treasury of the Beat-al-mal, or charity fund, is intended to afford mouthfuls to the poor, and not bellyfuls to the imps of the devil.—That fool who can illuminate the day with a camphorated taper must soon feel a want of oil for his lamp ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... skirt. She ordered her servants to fan him and to throw water in his face, and he regained consciousness just as one of the carts was passing. It was drawn by four oxen, completely covered with black cloth, and attached to each horn was a lighted wax taper. Leading the oxen were two demons with such horrible, frightful faces that Sancho shut his eyes tightly after having got one glance of them. An old, worthy-looking man with a long, snow-white beard sat on a raised seat on the cart; and when he passed Don Quixote ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... At length a fine psalm was sung, the chief door was thrown open, the high altar and its splendid decorations were displayed, and from the side doors issued forth the whole troop of officiating priests bearing the bread and wine for the sacrament, preceded by one man with a lighted taper, and the high priest coming in the rear with a silver chalice; the procession is closed by a priest with a salver on his head. Again they all entered the sanctuary, the bread and wine were placed on the altar, and the ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... of wind-strewn sand-hills,' inhabited by armies of rabbits, and haunted by peewits and gulls, the Burrows are brightened by masses of wild-flowers, from the great mullein—once known as hedge-taper, because of its pale torch of blossoms—to the tiny delicate rose-pink bells of the bog-pimpernel. 'To the left were rich, alluvial marshes, covered with red cattle sleeping in the sun, and laced with creeks ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... chisel should never be ground to a long, tapering point, like a wood chisel. The proper taper for a wood chisel is 15 degrees, whereas a cold chisel should be 45 degrees. A drifting chisel may have a longer taper than one ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... Friedrich Wilhelm and his strange Court, with such an Heir-Apparent growing up in it, there is no real light to be had, except what Wilhelmina gives,—or kindles dark Books of others into giving. For that, too, on long study, is the result of her, here and there. With so flickery a wax-taper held over Friedrich's childhood,—and the other dirty tallow-dips all going out in intolerable odor,—judge if our ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... creature who is denied the milk of its mother's breast. Vouchsafe that she resemble her hapless parent in nothing but a chaste life. And thou, celestial warrior, that didst deliver the maiden out of the serpent's mouth, if I have ever lit humble taper on thine altar, and set before thee offerings of gold and incense, be, I implore thee, her advocate. Be her advocate to such purpose, that in every turn of fortune she may be enabled to count on thy good help.' Here she ceased, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... unflickering light from a waxen taper burning in a glass of oil lent an unusual air of Sabbath quiet ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... theatres now, and the following is your bill of fare. Fairies you have by scores in flesh-coloured tights, spangles, and paucity of petticoats; gnomes of every description, from the gigantic glittering diamond beetle, to the grotesque and dusky tadpole. Epicene princes, whose taper limbs and swelling busts are well worth the scrutiny of the opera-glass—dragons vomiting at once red flames and witticisms about the fountains in Trafalgar Square—Dan O'Connell figuring in the feathers of a Milesian owl—and the Seven Champions of Christendom ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... depth of the charm or spell over him, which lay, for a little while at least, in the mere absence of pain; once, especially, when an older boy taught him to make flowers of sealing-wax, and he had burnt his hand badly at the lighted taper, and been unable to sleep. He remembered that also afterwards, as a sort of typical thing—a white vision of heat about him, clinging closely, through the languid scent of the ointments put upon the place ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... some inkling of what had happened. It was shortly after this notable event that Myles was formally initiated into squirehood. His father and mother, as was the custom, stood sponsors for him. By them, each bearing a lighted taper, he was escorted to the altar. It was at St. Mary's Priory, and Prior Edward blessed the sword and girded it to the lad's side. No one was present but the four, and when the good Prior had given the benediction and had signed the cross upon his forehead, Myles's mother stooped and kissed his brow ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... the rest. The herd made an inclination in my direction, in which the solitary animal coincided, and this brought him within fifty yards of the spot where I stood. I profited by the opportunity, and by the aid of steel and taper, I wrote his description on the spot. I would have given a thousand dollars, Ellen, for a single shot from the rifle of one ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Mordecai, the Jewess, as only a friend. Do you promise?" she said, trembling from head to to foot, for it had required all the moral strength of her yielding nature to utter these words-words that could instantly quench the only taper of hope that still burned in ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... two guardes, avowing, Aspicit unam One guideth me, though more I see. Good parts imparted are not empaired: Your springs are first to serve your selfe, yet may yeelde your neighbours sweete water; your taper is to light to you first, and yet it may light your neighbours candle. I might make doubt, least I or mine be not now of any further use to your selfe-sufficiencie, being at home so instructed for Italian, as teaching or learning could supplie, that there seemed ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... expected to like, could she? "craping up to thim top storeys in the ayvil hours." The gas and the electric light were off the house, and she fairly evoked a gruesome vision of her march through the great grey rooms—so many of them as there were too!—with her glimmering taper. Miss Staverton met her honest glare with a smile and the profession that she herself certainly would recoil from such an adventure. Spencer Brydon meanwhile held his peace—for the moment; the question ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... cannon was thrown back like an echo from one of the Englishman's discharges, and Barnstable and his companions had the pleasure of seeing the Ariel stretching slowly out of the little bay where she had passed the night, with the smoke of the gun of defiance curling above her taper masts. ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Washington Monument, sending up a huge spout of dust that veiled it from his eyes. Instinctively Dick shot toward the scene. Slowly the dust subsided, and then a yell of exultation broke from Dick's lips. The noble shaft still stood, a slim taper pointing ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... this shadow of an overcast sky. He walked to the window and gazed out on the cloister-like veranda. A melancholy willow at an angle of the stables seemed to be wringing its hands in the rising wind. He turned for relief to the dim fire that flickered like a votive taper in the vault-like hearth, and drew a chair towards it. In spite of the impatience and preoccupation of a lover, he found himself again and again recurring to the story he had just heard, until the vengeful ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... occasion her eye has a fire in its depths that brooks no interference. Her brows are knotted with an angry frown; as she raises them hastily, the frown has departed. The small and still plump white hand is extended. Sir Thomas Seymour bows very low, receives the hand, kissing the tips of the taper fingers, is seated in an elegantly embroidered ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... teacher could not wait for the late breakfast of the luxurious Grahams, and, just as the first level ray of sunshine flashed up from the east, she tied on her bonnet and noiselessly entered Cornelia's room. The heavy curtains kept it close and dark, and on the hearth a taper burned with pale, sickly light. Cornelia slept soundly; but her breathing was heavy and irregular, and the face wore a scowl, as if some severe pain had distorted it. The ivory-like arms were thrown up over the head, and large drops glistened on the wan brow. Beulah ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... had drank too strong a cup of green tea, and vinaigrettes that you could hold to your nose to keep you from fainting when you saw a dandy. Oh! I can tell you that Mr. Nonesuch understood keeping a toy shop; there were plenty of carriages always in front of it, plenty of taper fingers pulling over his wares, and plenty of husbands and fathers who returned thanks that New Year's ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... allow the passage of his finger beneath. In this manner he raised the mouth of the trap (to which the carpet was still fastened by tacks), and I found that it led into the after hold. He next lit a small taper by means of a phosphorous match, and, placing the light in a dark lantern, descended with it through the opening, bidding me follow. I did so, and he then pulled the cover upon the hole, by means of a nail driven into ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... about the by-ways of his palace, till he came to a chamber, over whose doorway hung a curtain. He raised that curtain and saw, at the upper end of the room, a bedstead whereon lay something black, as it were a man asleep, with a wax taper on his right hand and another on his left; and as the Caliph stood wondering at the sight, behold, he remarked a flagon full of old wine whose mouth was covered by the cup. The Caliph wondered even more at this, saying, "How ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... run, Now gorg'd with death, they drag him on the ground Up to the altar, where devoted lies The priest himself, a panting sacrifice. Thus with his blood the temple they prophane; Losing their gods; Troy's ruin thus began: Now the bright taper of the night appears, Gayly attended with a train of stars: When midst the Trojans, dead in sleep and wine, The Grecians execute their dire design: When from the open'd caverns of the horse, Like a large flood, their hidden troops ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—and when you lugged it home, wishing it were ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... taken too much, my dear," he said kindly. "Or else it affects you more than it did—possibly because you no longer need it. I shall taper you off by degrees, and then I think we can do ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... afterwards became the special spoilt favourite of Edward, whose sternness gave place to excessive fondness among his children. Moreover, she in the end became the wife of that same red- haired Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, who at this time stood holding his wax taper, and looking at the small swaddled morsel of royalty with all a bachelor's contempt for infancy, and little dreaming that he ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the family, in which case, detection would have been immediate, and imprisonment inevitable. Keeping it, therefore, entirely to himself, he concealed it from every eye during the day, and at night, after the family had gone to bed, he sat up, lighted his taper, and, when every thing was still and silent about him, ventured, only then, to read over the paper, and to get by heart the most important parts of the intelligence regarding England; and he afterwards transmitted the invaluable present to some secret ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... casting inter-cell connectors, terminals, terminal screws, taper lugs, plate straps ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... the figures sustained by other hands than mine. I turned away tantalized, left the dancers, and wandered into the oak-panelled dining-room. No fibre of sympathy united me to any living thing in this house; I looked for and found my mother's picture. I took a wax taper from a stand, and held it up. I gazed long, earnestly; my heart grew to the image. My mother, I perceived, had bequeathed to me much of her features and countenance—her forehead, her eyes, her complexion. No regular ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... under pressures up to 160 pounds, all fittings 3-1/2 inches and under should be screwed. Fittings 4 inches and over should have flanged ends. Fittings for this pressure should be of cast iron and should have heavy leads and full taper threads. Flanged fittings in high pressure lines should be extra heavy, and in low pressure lines standard weight. Where possible in high pressure flanges and fittings, bolt surfaces should be spot faced to provide suitable bearing for bolt heads ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... moments useless as the vapour That rises from the lamp's extinguish'd flame! Why do we, like the moth around the taper, Sport with the fire ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... power, Charmer of an idle hour, Object of my warm desire Lip of wax, and eye of fire, And thy snowy taper waist With my finger gently braced, And thy pretty smiling crest With my little stopper pressed, And the sweetest bliss of blisses Breathing from thy balmy kisses, Happy thrice and thrice again Happiest he of happy men, Who, when again the night ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... fresco in the concave ceiling. The daughter is not rich, I suppose, any more than the mother. The furniture is worn and faded, and I was admitted by a solitary servant, who carried a twinkling taper before me up the great dark ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... his rule, and the people find themselves well off, in spite of the many taxes laid upon them. But what are the people? a vulgar multitude who, like the gnats, fly towards every thing brilliant, and, so long as the taper burns, will continue to flutter round it, even though they burn their wings in doing so. Let Pisistratus' torch burn out, Phanes, and I'll swear that the fickle crowd will flock around the returning nobles, the new light, just as they now do ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... bed, the six feet wide one for the space between the beds; but after the ridges are built, earthed over and covered with straw, they are almost six feet wide at the base. The common sizes of ridges are two feet wide by two feet high, and two and one-half feet wide by two and one-half feet high, and taper to six or ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... a word. He lighted a taper and burned the letter. "He has his way to make," he said ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... plunged into utter obscurity; the sole thing that indicated a change of place was the smell, not so much because it was more agreeable than that of the staircase, as because it was distinct; on the contrary, at night, in the vague light shed by a cork night-taper afloat in the water and oil of a bowl that was attached to the wall by a brass ring, there could be seen through a certain dim nebulosity, the furniture, the pictures and the other paraphernalia that ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... and imprecations loud and deep, Kendal succeeded in striking a match and finding the overturned bit of wax taper, which he hastily lighted, peering cautiously into the ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... newspapers,—for it was his habit to light his own fire occasionally when he worked unusually late at night or early in the morning. He relighted his fire now as cleverly as any housemaid in Bloomsbury, and stood watching it till it burned briskly. Then he lit a taper, and went downstairs to the professional torture-chamber. The tall horsehair chair looked unutterably awful in the dim glimmer of the taper, and a nervous person could almost have fancied it occupied by the ghost of some patient who had expired ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... shape the mould of races, —that you may look in vain for verification of ethnological assertions.... No: the heel does not protrude;—the foot is not flat, but finely arched;—the extremities are not large;—all the limbs taper, all the muscles are developed; and prognathism has become so rare that months of research may not yield a single striking case of it.... No: this is a special race, peculiar to the island as are the shapes ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... upon my thunder-pulsing breast, O ship, Thou would'st tremble, nor repine, That being mine, Thy spars, Like long pale lights of falling stars, Plunged in the Stygian blackness of the sea, And to billowy ruin cast Thy tall and taper mast, Rushed shrieking headlong down to an abyss. O ship! O love! if Death Were such sure portion, thou could'st not refuse But thou would'st choose As mine to die, and call such choosing bliss; For thou for me Wert plann'd ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... and more intricate; huge warehouses, seven or eight stories high, loomed at either side of me; and at last, on turning an angle, a fresh sea-breeze met me, and showed that I was near the harbor. I avow that the sight of shipping, the tall and taper spars that streaked the sky of night, the clank of chain cables, and the heavy surging sound of the looming hulls, were any thing but encouraging, longing as I did for the rustling leaves of some green lane: but still all was quiet and tranquil; a few flickering lights twinkled ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... mamma, you know. They are not like your wax taper at all; they are little wax matches, that burn just long enough to seal one or two letters; Miss Allen showed me how she used them. Hers were in a nice little box just like the inkstand on the outside; and there was a place to light the matches, and a place ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... insult, Skuld proudly rose and declared that her sister's gifts should be of no avail, since she would decree that the child should live only as long as the taper then burning near the bedside. These ominous words filled the mother's heart with terror, and she tremblingly clasped her babe closer to her breast, for the taper was nearly burned out and its extinction could not be very long delayed. The eldest Norn, however, had no intention ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... clearly that nothing could save her, and resigned myself entirely to the will of God; he gave, and he can take away. Picture to yourself the state of alarm, care, and anxiety in which I have been kept for the last fortnight. She died without being conscious of any thing—her life went out like a taper. Three days ago she confessed, received the sacrament and extreme unction; but since that time she has been constantly delirious and rambling, until this afternoon at twenty-one minutes after five, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... is said to have three white stripes: our sailors caught one, but it got away again. The mole here is larger than in Europe; the upper part of the body is of a greyish brown, the lower part an ash grey; the legs are covered with a white fur, and the taper tail is one-fifth of the length of the body. A shrew-mouse also was caught. Two or three kinds of large cats are said to have been seen; a mustela, something of the nature of the Lutreola, was shot near the Rio Sacramento. The sea-otter still abounds here, but ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... inquire about a smell of fire that was prevalent there; and janet's replying that she had been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I wore; and when I was left there, with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five minutes, I heard them lock my door on the outside. Turning these things over in my mind I deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know nothing of me, might suspect I had a ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... for some dark deed to be committed. The horse in the stable, I dare say, belonged to some belated traveler caught like ourselves in a storm afar from an inn. Marked you how she answered me not when I spoke on't? How the wind howls, and how blue the taper burns! 'Sblood! I'd sooner ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... profile, white from the fatigue of the journey, but beautiful as alabaster; at the blue of her eyes; at the delicate taper of her small white hands that from her birth had done only the daintiest of service; at the small feet that had never once walked the rough and sordid pathway ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... Amelia Island which is a quarter of a mile long with a medium depth of three feet and a breadth of nearly five. That of Bear's Point covers sixty acres of ground, that of Anercerty Point one hundred, and that of Santa Rosa five hundred. Others taper to a great height. Turtle Mound, near Smyrna, is formed of a mass of oyster shells attaining a height of nearly thirty feet, and the height of several others is more than forty feet.[119] In all of them bushels ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... alone, The taper's flame, by envious current blown, Crouched low, and eddied round, as in affright, So challenged by the vast and hostile night, Then down I held the taper; — swift and fain Up climbed the lovely flower of ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... little later. As soon as he saw Alice he frowned and began to shake his head; but she only laughed, and imitating his hypocritical scowl, yet fringing it with a twinkle of merry lines and dimples, pointed a taper finger at him ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... it was impossible she could find the way to her chamber, without a light, the difficulty of procuring which, and the danger of wandering about the castle, without one, immediately struck her. Bertrand had only a torch, and she knew, that the servants never brought a taper to the door, for the hall was sufficiently lighted by the large tripod lamp, which hung in the vaulted roof; and, while she should wait till Annette could bring a taper, Montoni, or some of his companions, might ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... the hind legs, although retaining all their typical bones, have become shortened up almost to rudiments, and directed backwards, so as to be of no use for walking, while serving to complete the fish-like taper of the body. (Fig. 2.) But in the whales the modification has gone further than this so that the hind legs have ceased to be apparent externally, and are only represented internally—and even this only in some species—by remnants ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... queen of France during the first six weeks of her widowhood. During this period of mourning she spent her time in a closed room, lit only by a wax taper, and was dressed wholly in white. Mary, the widow of Louis XII., was called La reine Blanche during her days of mourning, and is sometimes (but erroneously) ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... combination, the gas must first be liberated by acting upon the substance with a stronger acid, and then applying the lime-water test. The presence of large quantities of carbonic acid in a gaseous mixture can be readily detected by plunging into the vessel a lighted taper, which will be immediately extinguished. This ought always to be adopted in a brewery, where many fatal accidents have happened through workmen going down into empty fermenting vats and wells without first ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... candlelight, the kitling's eyne, Corrupted wood, serve here for shine; No glaring light of broad-faced day, Or other over-radiant ray Ransacks this room, but what weak beams Can make reflected from these gems, And multiply; such is the light, But ever doubtful, day or night. By this quaint taper-light he winds His errors up; and now he finds His moon-tann'd Mab as somewhat sick, And, love knows, tender as a chick. Upon six plump dandelions high- Rear'd lies her elvish majesty, Whose woolly bubbles seem'd to drown Her Mabship ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... this back entrance from the portico. One of these men, a tall fellow with an ugly scowl, came forward, holding a pair of keys in his hand, and after a moment's parley with the kavass unlocked a heavily ironed door, lighting a taper at the lantern. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... himself hath chosen this beauty for Her Majesty—she who perchance will never mount him, scorning to do aught that would make the blood flow warmer through the veins;—going daily to San Nicolo with her taper and knowing naught of pleasure in life; unless it verily pleaseth her to grieve! What availeth it to ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Plan,—humanitarian, sage, pilgrim, ascetic, even the butcher and candlestick maker. And while we do not know it, really we are working together for one end hidden now in the divine economy of far-off destiny and justice.... To me the wonder of wonders is that I may some day light a little taper in your upper chamber myself, and kneel together with you before the same window to worship. Only, dear Heart, please get your ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Plekhanov muttered. "The more the natives progress the more nearly they'll equal our abilities. I wouldn't want anything to happen to our overall plans. As it is now, their abilities taper off at sixty and they reach senility at seventy or eighty. I think until the end we ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... not wait for the late breakfast of the luxurious Grahams, and, just as the first level ray of sunshine flashed up from the east, she tied on her bonnet and noiselessly entered Cornelia's room. The heavy curtains kept it close and dark, and on the hearth a taper burned with pale, sickly light. Cornelia slept soundly; but her breathing was heavy and irregular, and the face wore a scowl, as if some severe pain had distorted it. The ivory-like arms were thrown up over the head, and large drops glistened ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... to have gone down to the farm-house after tea, and inquired about the safety of my prizes, but Kate wanted to play chess. Peter couldn't, and Peggy wouldn't; I had to, of course, and we played late. Kate had such pretty hands; long taper fingers, rounded to the tiniest rosy points; no dimples, but full muscles, firm and exquisitely moulded; and the dainty way in which she handled her men was half the game to me;—I lost it; I played ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... of S. Domitilla in Via Sette Chiese, with Maria, Guido and Pascarella. The impression of walking for miles by taper-light between those close walls of brown friable stone, or that soft dusty ground, in a warm vague stifling air; the monotonous rough sides, the monotonous corners, the widenings in and out of little Galla Placidia-like crypts, with rough hewn pillars and faded ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... their departure was one of the most glowing that the climax of a long series of summer heats could evolve. The wide expanse of landscape quivered up and down like the flame of a taper, as they steamed along through the midst of it. Placid flocks of sheep reclining under trees a little way off appeared of a pale blue colour. Clover fields were livid with the brightness of the sun upon their deep red flowers. All waggons and carts were moved to the shade ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... six feet wide one for the space between the beds; but after the ridges are built, earthed over and covered with straw, they are almost six feet wide at the base. The common sizes of ridges are two feet wide by two feet high, and two and one-half feet wide by two and one-half feet high, and taper to six or eight inches ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... again to cross the main river to arrive at our camp. The Shillook canoe has often been described. It is formed of long pieces of the ambatch-wood, which is lighter than cork. These curious trees, which grow in the swamps of the White Nile, are thick at the base, and taper to a point, thus a number are lashed securely together, and the points are tied tightly with cord, so as to form a bow. These canoes or rafts generally convey two persons, and they are especially adapted ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... age, and we were caught by mild marvels, even if a friendly good faith in them, something sweet and sympathetic, was after all a value, whether of their own humanity, their own special quality, or only of our innocence, never to be renewed; but I light this taper to the initiators, so to call them, whom I remembered, when we had left them behind, as if they had given us a silver key to carry off and so to refit, after long years, to sweet names never thought ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... difficult to wait when she had so much to say. But she only fidgeted a little as mamma scrawled off an address in letters which Quillie thought would cover half her copy-book, then the little taper was lighted, the wax was melted, the pretty crest was imprinted on the seal, and mamma turned with a relieved ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Old Man of the Sea, to be sure!" answered one of the damsels. "He has fifty daughters, whom some people call very beautiful; but we do not think it proper to be acquainted with them, because they have sea- green hair, and taper away like fishes. You must talk with this Old Man of the Sea. He is a sea-faring person, and knows all about the garden of the Hesperides; for it is situated in an island which he is often in ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was led into a crowded inn in a large village, where we were to stay the night. We had come twenty-seven miles, and had begun well. I was shown into a room with three straw-covered wooden bedsteads, a rough table, lit by a lighted taper in a saucer of oil, a rough seat, and the naked earth floor. Hot water was brought me to wash with and tea to drink, and my man prepared me an excellent supper. My baggage was in the corner; it consisted of two light bamboo ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... masts and dark hull of a ship, which was anchored near the end of the cape, and within its protection. There was the look of womanly pride in her dark eye, and haply some consciousness of womanly power in the swell of her rich lip, while a taper finger beat the bar of the balcony, rapidly, and without consciousness ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... was silent in the death-chamber. The night-taper was placed behind a screen; and the fire-light flickered with a tremulous motion on the richly-carved, antique furniture, black and polished by age, and creeping upwards, threw long, wavering shadows on the wall. Amidst this solemn twilight, a table spread with white, which supported ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... the pillars' architrave, Men on the statues, men on the tombs With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs, All famishing in expectation Of the main-altar's consummation. For see, for see, the rapturous moment Approaches, and earth's best endowment Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires Pant up, the winding brazen spires Heave loftier yet the baldachin; The incense-gaspings, long kept in, Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant Holds his breath and grovels latent, As if God's hushing finger grazed him, (Like Behemoth when he praised him) At the silver ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... breath of air stirring, so the tapers burnt, beautifully." This must have strongly reminded the spectator of the introduction to the Monastery, and the visit of the worthy benedictine, accompanied by Captain Clutterbuck, for the purpose of taking up his patron's heart. My friend adds, "not a taper has been burnt in St. Mary's of Melrose since the days of Knox.—On Monday I went to the tower of Glendearg; at the fountain, where Sir Piercie Shafton and Halbert Glendinning fought, I got, with the help of my guide, some curious stones, said to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... note was written upon gilt-edged paper With a neat little crow-quill, slight and new;[ar] Her small white hand could hardly reach the taper, It trembled as magnetic needles do, And yet she did not let one tear escape her; The seal a sun-flower; "Elle vous suit partout,"[85] The motto cut upon a white cornelian; The wax ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... which was carried by twelve attendants in scarlet cloaks. The Tiara added dignity to the noble figure of the Pontiff. In his left hand, which was veiled with white silk, embroidered with gold, he held a lighted wax taper, while his right was left free to bless the people as he passed along. The correspondent of the London Times, who was a Protestant, says: "Looking over the sea of heads placed between me and the procession, I observed that all knelt before Pius IX., the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... rush-candle, in a pierced tin box, I had nothing to cheer the gloom of a very large apartment—the walls of which (now dotted all over by the melancholy rays of the rush-light, as they struggled through the holes of the box) were of dark-brown wainscoat—but one solitary wax taper. There lay coats, trousers, linen, books, papers, dressing-materials, in dire confusion, about the room. In despair I set me down at the foot of the bed, and contemplated the chaos around me. My energies were paralyzed by the scene. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... come back, one by one, ring added to ring on the little taper fingers, the rubies for the neck, and the pendent yellow earrings. Though Lizzie was in mourning for her father, still these things were allowed to be visible. The countess was not the woman to see them without inquiry, and she ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... life and the world appeared profitless to him, because he had no fruit of the heart in the garden of his soul. One night, while reclining on his couch, sad and thoughtful, consumed with grief like a morning taper, he heaved a deep sigh upon which one of his favourite wives (he had a hundred in his harem), advancing towards him and kissing the ground, inquired the cause of his distress. He discloses it. His wife consoles him, encourages him to hope, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... L.) there are several species, among which the jambu merah or kling (Eugenia malaccensis) is the most esteemed for the table, and is also the largest. In shape it has some resemblance to the pear, but is not so taper near the stalk. The outer skin, which is very fine, is tinged with a deep and beautiful red, the inside being perfectly white. Nearly the whole substance is edible, and when properly ripe it is a delicious fruit; but otherwise, it is spongy and indigestible. In smell and even in taste it ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... with clinchers bound. Long and capacious as a shipwright forms Some bark's broad bottom to outride the storms, So large he built the raft; then ribbed it strong From space to space, and nailed the planks along. These formed the sides; the deck he fashioned last; Then o'er the vessel raised the taper mast, With crossing sail-yards dancing in the wind: And to the helm the guiding rudder joined (With yielding osiers fenced to break the force Of surging waves, and steer the steady course). Thy loom, ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... round with a garland of freshly-gathered flowers, roses, and carnations, and heliotrope, the only things that looked real and living in the whole scene; and in the middle of this knelt the novice, still arrayed in her blue satin, white lace veil and jewels, and also with a great lighted taper in her hand. ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... with soft matting, are placed along the walls, and make very comfortable, easy couches. These pleasant little abodes, in which the greatest cleanliness is everywhere observable, are all surrounded by cultivated gardens. In the evening, they are lighted by the oily nuts of the taper-tree, fastened in rows ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... turned upon him, for he was a noted hand. He advanced to the table with great sangfroid, and, turning back the wrists of his coat, exhibited his beautiful sparkling paste shirt buttons, and the elegant turn of his taper hand, the middle finger of which was covered with massive rings. He took the box in a neglige manner, and without condescending to shake it, slid the dice out upon the table by a gentle sideway motion—"sixes!" ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... burning, side chapels pass unnoticed. If you are looking for inscriptions or want to admire the old master's picture, with which every church claims to be endowed, you must get the verger with his taper. Altars are gaudily decorated and statues bejeweled and be (artificial) flowered in Hispano-Italian fashion. The mairie, reconstructed from an ancient palace or castle, was more interesting. Beside the mairie a medieval square tower, which may have been a donjon, was ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... weather with increasing ease. With such a destination, what mattered a little buffeting of wind or a sprinkle of cold water? I recalled Flora's image, I took her in fancy to my arms, and my heart throbbed. And the next moment I had recognised the inanity of that fool's paradise. If I could spy her taper as she went to bed, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her bundle would warm them, perhaps, if she dare light it. She drew one out, and struck it against the wall. Bravo! it was a bright, warm flame, and she held her hands over it. It was quite an illumination for that poor little girl—nay, call it rather a magic taper—for it seemed to her as though she were sitting before a large iron stove with brass ornaments, so beautifully blazed the fire within! The child stretched out her feet to warm them also. Alas! in an instant the flame had died away, the stove vanished, the little girl sat ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... the pink of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's[5] women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered his aspect tenfold more redoubtable, ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... brows drops down A sudden curved frown: But when I turn away, Thou, willing me to stay, Wooest not, nor vainly wranglest; But, looking fixedly the while, All my bounding heart entanglest In a golden-netted smile; Then in madness and in bliss, If my lips should dare to kiss Thy taper fingers amorously, [3] Again thou blushest angerly; And o'er black brows ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... his chubby cheeks the delicate tints of a shiny crusty Beaucaire roll. On all the grand Alpine excursions it was to him that the Club entrusted its banner, and his childish soul had vowed to the P. C. A. a fanatical worship, the burning, silent adoration of a taper consuming itself before an altar ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... pressures up to 160 pounds, all fittings 3-1/2 inches and under should be screwed. Fittings 4 inches and over should have flanged ends. Fittings for this pressure should be of cast iron and should have heavy leads and full taper threads. Flanged fittings in high pressure lines should be extra heavy, and in low pressure lines standard weight. Where possible in high pressure flanges and fittings, bolt surfaces should be spot faced to provide suitable bearing for bolt ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... publisher insisted on having something, "I design'd him this which is now a-cutting: Upon an altar dedicated to Love, divers hearts transfix'd with arrows and darts are to lye broiling upon the coals; and upon the steps of it, Hymen ... in a posture as if he were going to light [his taper] to the altar; when Cupid is to come behind him and pull him by the saffron sleeve, with these words proceeding from his mouth: Nondum peracta sunt praeludia";[330] a statement that is only too true and in which Loveday summarizes unawares the truest criticism levelled at these romances. ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... watched him and blinked at him. At first he thought that the eye must be miles and miles away. But it came quickly nearer—and still nearer—until at last he knew that it was a candle burning with the silence of a death taper a yard ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... gave, and he can take away. Picture to yourself the state of alarm, care, and anxiety in which I have been kept for the last fortnight. She died without being conscious of any thing—her life went out like a taper. Three days ago she confessed, received the sacrament and extreme unction; but since that time she has been constantly delirious and rambling, until this afternoon at twenty-one minutes after five, when she was seized with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... instructions which now detained Isabel in the drawing-room. She lighted the taper, and closed and sealed the open envelope, without feeling curiosity enough even to look at the address. Mr. Hardyman was the uppermost subject in her thoughts. Leaving the sealed letter on the table, she returned ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... room at their left showed signs of recent occupancy. His quick survey marked an oil lamp in the corner, which, upon investigation, proved to be in working order, so he lit it with the end of his expiring taper. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... moulds for casting inter-cell connectors, terminals, terminal screws, taper lugs, plate ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... in a melancholy silence, Scholastique left her old wooden chair, fixed a taper on the end of a candlestick, lit it, and placed it near a small waxen Virgin, sheltered in her niche of stone. It was the family custom to kneel before this protecting Madonna of the domestic hearth, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... forget that journey through the passage, her light a flickering taper, for the electric illumination was no longer in operation. At the end of it she had literally to force her limbs to mount the narrow stairs. At the top, with her ear to the closed door, she could ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... ever observed in his official intercourse with men. It was written by his own hand, a secretary copying as he wrote. When finished, the original was put into an envelope, which the secretary was about to seal with a wafer; but this Nelson would not permit, directing that taper and wax should be brought. The man sent was killed before he could return. When this was reported to the admiral, his only reply was, "Send another messenger;" and he waited until the wax came, and then saw that particular care was ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... author's note.] And this is but one of thousands of "home towns" in that great basin, towns with Daphne streets and Queen Anne houses, and gloomy court-houses and austere churches and miniature libraries, towns that taper off into suburban shanties, towns that have in these new bottles, of varied and pretentious shapes, the best ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... clips and pass hydrogen through the vessel until the atmospheric air is replaced by hydrogen. This is determined by collecting some of the gas which bubbles through the water in the basin in a test-tube and testing it by means of a lighted taper. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... said, in her bad but charming English; "you need make no mystery of it. You wish to marry my sister-in-law. C'est un beau choix. A man like you ought to marry a tall, thin woman. You must know that I have spoken in your favor; you owe me a famous taper!" ...
— The American • Henry James
... doom, love's undershrieve, Why this reprieve? Why doth my she-advowson fly Incumbency? To sell thyself dost thou intend By candle's end, And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Life's taper out? Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; And if, to measure age's span, The sober Julian were th' account of man, Whilst you live by the ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... so that they are soft, alluring. The tower is pale, almost ethereal, at the end of the vista. Its great clock, pricked out with golden lamps, seems scarce a third of the way up its side. The white walls rise on, and on, with here and there a spot of gold, and taper into nothing. They are lost in the gloom of coming night. But still they must go on, for far aloft you see the lantern glowing like a star, hung between earth and heaven. In this twilight hour of blue and gold the tower is the mighty guardian spirit of the scene, sending down sonorous ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... testimony, afford a pretty accurate glimpse at the real nature of those events, however they may have been disguised by fiction and misstatement. Where tradition is our only guide we must follow implicitly, satisfied that her taper was lighted at the torch of Truth, though it may gleam doubtfully and partially through the mists and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... be in a church. I hold a torch in my hand and light one taper after another. For every taper that is lighted, the church grows larger and more beautiful. But I am a thief. If I am caught I must be buried alive, and now the church-bells are ringing. I ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... to assist, and in another minute or two the end of the tall taper stick was dropped into the hole and fixed there. A hole had been already bored in the top and a rope rove through it, to which Lumley soon attached the corners of a small ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... death, it had been brought up by the nobles, who closely guarded both it and the Queen, into her apartments, and there examined and replaced in the chest. The next night, one of the Queen's ladies upset a wax taper, without being aware of it, and before the fire was discovered, and put out, the corner of the chest was singed, and a hole burnt in the blue velvet cushion that lay on the top. Upon this, the lords had caused the ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Taper, the priest's son, commenced playing a polka, and the ladies went into the ballroom; the old butler and two footmen brought wax candles and basins of water, and the old ladies began to tell fortunes. A troupe of mummers tumbled in, a bear performed ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... the stage which we actually observe in the seals, where the hind legs, although retaining all their typical bones, have become shortened up almost to rudiments, and directed backwards, so as to be of no use for walking, while serving to complete the fish-like taper of the body. (Fig. 2.) But in the whales the modification has gone further than this so that the hind legs have ceased to be apparent externally, and are only represented internally—and even this only in some species—by ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... all, is by such love inspired, That all your world craves tidings of its doom: Within, there is the lofty light, endow'd With sapience so profound, if truth be truth, That with a ken of such wide amplitude No second hath arisen. Next behold That taper's radiance, to whose view was shown, Clearliest, the nature and the ministry Angelical, while yet in flesh it dwelt. In the other little light serenely smiles That pleader for the Christian temples, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the check? It was for $1,000. After all, it was more than I had ever before held in my hand at once. But what was a paltry thousand, aye a paltry ten thousand, to a man's pride? I bit off the end of my cigar, creased the check into a taper, and struck a match. I watched it burn and burn. I struck another. I held it within an inch of the check, but for the life of me ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... merely the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also. When I think about religion at all, I feel as if I would like to found an order for those who cannot believe: the Confraternity of the Faithless, one might call it, where on an altar, on which no taper burned, a priest, in whose heart peace had no dwelling, might celebrate with unblessed bread and a chalice empty of wine. Every thing to be true must become a religion. And agnosticism should have its ritual no less than faith. It has sown its martyrs, it should reap its saints, ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... nakedness as any bluegrass belle's in satin slippers. Her ankles, scratched by casual thorns and already beginning to blush brown from the June sun's ardent kisses, were as delicate as any he had ever seen enmeshed in silken hose. Her hands, long, slender, taper-fingered, actually dainty, although brown and roughened by hard labor, were, it seemed to him, better fitted for the fingering of a piano's keys than for the coarse and heavy tasks to which he knew they must be well accustomed. He gazed at her in veritable wonder. How had she ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... ourselves, what has become of the four other fingers or digits? We find in the places of the second and fourth digits only two slender splint-like bones, about two-thirds as long as the cannon-bone, which gradually taper to their lower ends and bear no finger joints, or, as they are termed, phalanges. Sometimes, small bony or gristly nodules are to be found at the bases of these two metacarpal splints, and it is probable that these represent rudiments of the first and fifth toes. Thus, the part ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... these last words in a livelier tone than usual, but it was like the last kindling of the taper in its oil-less socket — for instantly the paleness of death overspread his face, and after a feeble effort to vomit, with convulsions, the natural effect of great loss of blood, he ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... again alternately over a strand and under a strand of the rope, and then taper off by halving the strands before tucking the third time, and again halve them before the ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum
... friendly taper gloweth, Once more within our narrow cell, Then in the heart itself that knoweth, A light the darkness doth dispel. Reason her voice resumes; returneth Hope's gracious bloom, with promise rife; For streams of life the spirit yearneth, Ah! for ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Edith sat there came a low, choking sound, but it died away in her throat, and with her hands locked so firmly together that the taper nails made indentation in the tender flesh, she listened, ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... that horrid pail away before I come a step further," cried Fairy, pinching her little nose with her delicate white taper fingers. ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... fascinated bird who falls per force into the reptile's mouth, so do I plunge into its columns, read it with desperation, and when the poison has circulated, throw it away in despair. If I am reminded to say grace at dinner, I commence "My Lords, and gentlemen;" and when I seek my bed, as I light my taper, I move "that the House do now adjourn." The tradesmen's bills are swelled by my disease into the budget, and the checks upon my banker into supplies. Even my children laugh and wonder at the answers which they receive. Yesterday one brought me her book ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... stratified bases, built themselves into the likeness of vast teocallis to Tonatiuh, over whose apex the struggling rays fell red and presageful. Dulled by the stained glass windows, the light that filled the semi-circular chapel at "The Lilacs", was chill and sombre, until the fair sacristan held a taper over the tall wax candles on each side of the altar, whence a mellow radiance soon streamed over all; flashing along the golden letters under the cross, and upon the gilded pipes of the little organ. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... also the name of Hedge Taper, and used to be called Torch, because the stalks were dipped in suet, and burnt for giving light at funerals and other gatherings. "It is a plant," says the Grete Herball, "whereof is made a manner of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Scandza, which we left above. Claudius Ptolemaeus, an excellent describer of the world, has made mention of it in the second book of his work, saying: "There is a great island situated in the surge of the northern Ocean, Scandza by name, in the shape of a juniper leaf with bulging sides that taper down to a point at a long end." Pomponius Mela also makes mention of it as situated in the Codan Gulf of the sea, ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... and lights are burning close at hand to enable him to do so. If a party of gentlemen are invited to dine together, the host so orders that a packet of the finest cigarettes is frequently passed to his guests, with a lighted taper, in the course of the meal, and at its close some favorite brand of the more substantial cigar is furnished to all. Thus, tobacco is consumed on every occasion, in the council-chamber, the court, at funerals, in the domestic circles, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... drove round very quick to and fro by means of a small Wheel, which may be mov'd with ones foot, serves to grind the Glass: The other Mandril is shap'd like this, but it has an even neck instead of a taper one, and runs in a Collar, that by the help of a Screw and a joynt made like M in the Figure, it can be still adjustned to the wearing or wasting neck: into the end of this Mandril is screwed a Chock ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... profess; crush it out if it exists, and remember Leah Mordecai, the Jewess, as only a friend. Do you promise?" she said, trembling from head to to foot, for it had required all the moral strength of her yielding nature to utter these words-words that could instantly quench the only taper of hope that still burned ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... in the flanges, and the bosses facing the holes were not machined. The customary grout hole was tapped in the center of each plate for a standard 1-1/4-in. pipe. In this work, experience indicated that the standard pipe thread was too fine, and that the taper was objectionable. Each segment weighed, approximately, 2,020 lb., and the key weighed 520 lb., the total weight being 9,102 lb. per lin. ft. of tunnel. Fig. 1 shows the details of the standard ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace, Francis Mason and S. H. Woodard
... mother had brought in her bundle—the old Scythian Artemis, hanging there on the wall, side by side with the forgotten Ares, blood-red,—the goddess reveals herself to the lad, poring through the dusk by taper-light, as at once a virgin, necessarily therefore the creature of solitude, yet also as the assiduous nurse of children, and patroness of the young. Her friendly intervention at the act of birth everywhere, her claim upon the nursling, among tame and wild creatures equally, among men as among ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... room usually occupied by the family was on the ground floor, and I cautiously approached the window. Mr Somerville and Emily were both there. He was reading aloud; she sat at the table with a book before her: but her thoughts, it was evident, were not there; she had inserted her taper fingers into the ringlets of her hair, until the palms of her hand reached her forehead; then, bending her head towards the table, she leaned on her elbows, and seemed absorbed in the most ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... had in her composition a strong vein of the superstitious, and was pleased, among other fancies, to read alone in her chamber by a taper fixed in a candlestick which she had formed out of a human skull. One night, this strange piece of furniture acquired suddenly the power of locomotion, and, after performing some odd circles on her chimneypiece, fairly leaped on the floor, and continued to roll about the apartment. Mrs. Swinton ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... though it be a wilderness, where the ashes of those we have loved repose. Where the heart has laid down what it loved most, there it is desirous of laying itself down. No sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no honorable inscription, no ever-burning taper that would drive away the darkness of the tomb, can soften our sense of the reality of death, and hallow to our feelings the ground which is to cover us, like the consciousness that we shall sleep, dust to dust, with ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... without having seen my long-expected brother,—the brother of the soul, that some secret instinct taught me to expect, and whose image, foreshadowed in my fancy, had made me indifferent to all real beings. Yes," she said, covering her eyes with her rosy taper fingers between which I saw one or two tears trickle; "oh, yes, the dream of all my nights was embodied in you this morning, when I awoke! ... Oh, if it were not too late to live on, I would wish to live for centuries, ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... been burning the midnight taper, And of new policies deem yourself shaper; If at the world you're a green-gosling gaper, Or of old "JUNIUS," juvenile aper; Bumptious Scotch Duke, or irate Irish Draper, Crammed with conceit, which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... a native of the Cape of Good Hope, was sent to me by Dr. Hooker. The leaves are elongated, slightly concave along the middle and taper towards the apex, [page 280] which is bluntly pointed and reflexed. They rise from an almost woody axis, and their greatest peculiarity consists in their foliaceous green footstalks, which are almost as broad and ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... not possible for any one, much less a youth of either sex, to read "A Strange Manuscript" without feeling that wonderful charm that stole over us all when children upon the perusal of our favorite adventures. The cathedral clock may chime the fast-speeding hours, and the midnight taper burn to its socket, but this rare volume will remain before the eager eyes until the last ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... repeated with a wax taper instead of the bullet, with a view of separating the light from the caloric. For this purpose a transparent plate of glass must be interposed between the mirrors; for light, you know, passes with great facility through ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... household that was darkened by trouble, as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her fellow-creature. There glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's bard extremity, across the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. In such emergencies Hester's nature showed itself ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... air; Smooth, square forehead, with uprolled hair; Lips that lover has never kissed; Taper fingers and slender wrist; Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; So they painted the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... the tapestry door which led to her apartments. Esmond stood by the fireplace, blankly staring after her. Indeed, he scarce seemed to see until she was gone; and then her image was impressed upon him, and remained forever fixed upon his memory. He saw her retreating, the taper lighting up her marble face, her scarlet lip quivering, and her shining golden hair. He went to his own room, and to bed, where he tried to read, as his custom was; but he never knew what he was reading. And he could not get to sleep until daylight, and woke with a ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Anne had the taper alight, and the wax held to it, the note ready in her hand, when the room-door was thrown open by Mrs. ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... although their innocent use was to hang beds on them to air. On a tarnished plate he deciphered "ARTISTES' ENTRANCE," and while perplexed, even as the gendarmes appeared at the mouth of this blind-alley, a long and taper hand was laid on his arm and a voice, very, very sweet, though in a mere murmur, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... the country. The original curfew bell, which is supposed to have hung in the Abbey, tolled for the funeral of Henry VI, murdered a few hours before in the Tower of London, and hurried to Chertsey to be buried "without priest, clerk, torch or taper, singing or saying." According to the safer chronicles, the dead king's body was ferried to the Abbey by water. But Shakespeare in Richard III sends the corpse through London streets "borne in ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... reads from the missal, this book is held by the first, and a taper by the second, patriarch or assisting bishop[25]. The Kyrie eleison, the Gloria in excelsis, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei are said by all persons within the sanctuary: the cardinals descend from their seats to say them, and form a circle in the middle of the ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... to the assiduous care he bestowed on his handsome person. His slightly curly, black hair was worn long, so that he might often have occasion to push it back from his forehead, with a hand as white and delicate as a woman's, upon one of whose taper fingers sparkled an enormous diamond—a great deal too big to be real. He was rather fancifully dressed, and always falling into such graceful, languishing attitudes as he thought would be admired by the fair sex, whose devoted slave he was. This Adonis never for one moment laid aside ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... out, and the gloom of the room was only lightened by a single bed-room taper, which, as it stood near the door, only served to render palpable the darkness of the further end of the chamber. For half an hour Lord Cashel walked to and fro, anxious, wretched, and in doubt, instead of going to his room. How he wished that Lord Ballindine ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... with such things, he revenged himself by a new and even stranger drollery. Thus he afterwards exhibited, in the ante-room of the great concert-hall, an ideal female figure, in his own style, who was raising a pair of snuffers to a taper; and he was extraordinarily delighted when he was able to cause a dispute on the question, whether this singular muse meant to snuff the light or to extinguish it? when he roguishly allowed all sorts of ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... youth and entering the dormitory, found there a spread couch, to wit, a sleeping-place: so he cast himself on the bed, marvelling at the paintings that were in the chamber, which was lighted by one waxen taper. Presently he fell asleep and slumbered heavily till eventide, when there came a hand-maid, bringing with her as of wont all the dessert, eatables and drinkables, usually made ready for the king and his wife, and seeing the youth lying on his back (and none knowing ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... select two good 20-foot pieces, 3 inches wide and 1 1/2 inches thick, and one 10-foot long, of the same thickness and width. Plane off the bottom sides of the 10-foot strip, beginning about two feet back from each end, and taper them so the strip will be about 3/4 inch thick at the extreme ends. Lay the two 20-foot beams end to end, and under the joint thus made place the 10-foot strip, with the planed-off ends downward. The joint of the 20-foot pieces should be directly in the center of the 10-foot ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... glass of Chianti, Miss Morstan? Or of Tokay? I keep no other wines. Shall I open a flask? No? Well, then, I trust that you have no objection to tobacco-smoke, to the mild balsamic odor of the Eastern tobacco. I am a little nervous, and I find my hookah an invaluable sedative." He applied a taper to the great bowl, and the smoke bubbled merrily through the rose-water. We sat all three in a semicircle, with our heads advanced, and our chins upon our hands, while the strange, jerky little fellow, with his high, shining head, puffed uneasily in ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to light his own fire occasionally when he worked unusually late at night or early in the morning. He relighted his fire now as cleverly as any housemaid in Bloomsbury, and stood watching it till it burned briskly. Then he lit a taper, and went downstairs to the professional torture-chamber. The tall horsehair chair looked unutterably awful in the dim glimmer of the taper, and a nervous person could almost have fancied it occupied by the ghost ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... directly beneath my window. It was led by a priest, bearing the banner of the church, and followed by two boys, holding long flambeaux in their hands. Next came a double file of priests in their surplices, with a missal in one hand and a lighted wax taper in the other, chanting the funeral dirge at intervals—now pausing, and then again taking up the mournful burden of their lamentation, accompanied by others, who played upon a rude kind of bassoon, with a dismal and wailing sound. Then followed ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... was such a tiny, steady light. Was it possible that one of the children was sick and Gussie had not told him? The last thought sent him flying up the stairs three steps at a time, and he reached the flag room door so breathless that he could scarcely turn the knob. The bed was empty. Only a wee taper from the Christmas tree burned faintly ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Eugippius's life of St. Severinus. The reader finds how the man who had secretly celebrated a heathen sacrifice was discovered by St. Severinus, because, while the tapers of the rest of the congregation were lighted miraculously from heaven, his taper alone would not light; and passes on impatiently, with regret that the biographer omits to mention what the heathen sacrifice was like. He reads how the Danube dared not rise above the mark of the cross which St. Severinus had cut upon the ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... open slowly. The girl, holding a thin taper in her hand, seeing another man with me, began to back away before us slowly, shading the light with her hand. Her impassive white face looked ghostly. I followed behind General Robles. Her eyes were fixed on mine. I made a gesture ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... and the crooked intentions, the adherent unhandsomeness and the direct crimes; for all things are laid up safely, and tho we draw a curtain of cobweb over them, and a few fig-leaves before our shame, yet God shall draw away the curtain, and forgetfulness shall be no more, because, with a taper in the hand of God, all the corners of our nastiness shall be discovered. And, secondly, it signifies this also, that not only the justice of God shall be confest by us in our own shame and condemnation, but the evil ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... Everything combines to scare Charity's dear pensioner! —Say, vagrant, can'st thou grant to me A slice of thy philosophy? Haply, in thy many trudgings, Having found unchallenged lodgings, Thy thoughts, unused to saddle-crupper, Ambling no farther than thy supper— Thou, by the light of heaven-lit taper, Mendest thy prospective paper! Then, jolly pauper, stitch till day; Let not thy roses drop away, Lest, begrimed with muddy matter, Thy body peep from every tatter, And men—a charitable dose— Should physic thee with food and clothes! Nursling of adversity! 'Tis thy glory ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... watched our coming; "tarry here and honour my roof." Another came up, shook us by the hand, his eye sparkling with kind feelings. A third took our mules by the bridles and led us to his own door, when half-a-dozen pretty girls, with flashing dark eyes and long taper fingers, insisted on undoing our leggings and ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... foolish mumming came—the carnival mumming that as a boy I had loved so well, and that, ever since I had come and stitched under my Apollo and Crispin, I had never been loth to meddle and mix in, going mad with my lit taper, like the rest, and my whistle of the Befana, and all the salt and sport of a war of wits such as old Rome has always heard in midwinter since the seven ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... gem from those that deck Thy taper fingers, white brow or neck; Young girl, a rose from thy glossy hair, One inch of that lace so costly and rare, Would give food and heat, and cheerful light To that wretched home, for ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... a precipitous morass to the river's brink. A slender pine-tree spanned the screaming foam and bent midway to touch the water. The surge beat upon the taper trunk and gave it a rhythmical swaying motion, while the feet of the packers had worn smooth its wave-washed surface. Eighty feet it stretched in ticklish insecurity. Frona stepped upon it, felt it move beneath her, heard the bellowing of the water, saw the ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... of medium height. A fourth lamp showed me her hands, small, firm, white; also I could catch a glimpse of her arm, as it lay outstretched, her fingers clasping a fan. So I knew her arms were round and taper, hence all her limbs and figure finely molded, because nature does not do such things by halves, and makes no bungles in her symmetry of contour when she plans a noble specimen of humanity. Here was a noble specimen of what ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... fire, Kousma was telling a story, laughing and gesticulating meanwhile. Sanine was laughing, too. The fire burned with a slender flame, as that of a taper, the light being rosy, not red as at night-time, while overhead, in the blue dome of heaven, the first stars glittered. There was an odour of ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... he pondered, came a sudden burst Of high-pitched fairy horn-calls, like the first, But nearer, clearer, deadlier than before, Blown seemingly from just outside the door. The casements shook, the taper lights all trembled; The bravest knight's dismay was ill-dissembled; And as all sprang with one accord to win Their swords and shields, stern combat to begin, The great doors shot their bolts, and ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... these stars which deck this beauteous sky By force of th'inward sun both shine and move; Throned in her heart sits love's high majesty; In highest majesty the highest love. As when a taper shines in glassy frame, The sparkling crystal burns in glittering flame, So does that brightest love brighten ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... friend; And prays that no corrosive disappointment May mar the lenient virtues of his ointment; Of which, a bit not larger than a shot, Or that more murd'rous thing, "a beauty spot," Warmed on the finger by the taper's ray, Smear o'er the eye affected twice a day. Proffer not gold—I swear by my degree, From beauty's lily hand to take no fee; No glittering trash be mine, I scorn such pelf, The eye, when cured, will pay the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... vestments, commenced the services of the day; the abbot himself celebrated high mass, assisted by brother Elfget the deacon, brother Savin the sub-deacon, and the brothers Egelred and Wyelric, youths who acted as taper-bearers. When the mass was finished, just as the abbot and his assistants had partaken of the holy communion, the Danes burst into the church. The abbot was slain upon the holy altar by the hand of the Danish king Oskytal, and the other priests and monks ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... poor fellow utter a sigh of relief, but he did not even wince, only stood motionless as his tyrant took the wax taper, held it to his cigar till it burned well, and then extinguished it by placing the little wick against the black man's bare arm, before pitching the wax to the man, who caught it ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... Mamma, you know. They are not like your wax taper at all; they are little wax matches, that burn just long enough to seal one or two letters; Miss Allen showed me how she used them. Hers were in a nice little box, just like the inkstand on the outside; and there was a place to light the matches, and a place to set ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... found some large rolls of street posters, which had been left there by some disappointed canvasser the year before, and which had accompanied one cell of the cabin in its travels. Dane is a prompt man, and, in a minute more, he had locked the door behind him, had struck a wax taper which he had in his cigar-box, had rolled the paper roll out on the floor, to serve as a pillow. In five minutes more, covered with his heavy coat, he lay on the floor, sleeping as soundly as he had slept ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... Sheets of blank scratch-paper lay before them, and they relaxed not their knit brows. Now and then, one of them, after gazing vacantly about the room for ten or fifteen minutes, would attack the sheet before him with fiercest energy; then the energy would taper off, and the paragraph halt, the writer peruse it dubiously, then angrily tear off the sheet and hurl it to the floor. All around them lay ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the taper as she hurried in; Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died: She closed the door, she panted, all akin To spirits of the air and visions wide: No utter'd syllable, or woe betide! But to her heart, her heart was voluble, Paining with eloquence her balmy side; As though a tongueless nightingale ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... group is generally a slower process than their production: if the appearance and disappearance of a group of species be represented, as before, by a vertical line of varying thickness, the line is found to taper more gradually at its upper end, which marks the progress of extermination, than at its lower end, which marks the first appearance and increase in numbers of the species. In some cases, however, the extermination of whole groups of beings, as of ammonites towards the close of the secondary ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... here, a repetition of the ceremonies observed at Dieppe; but previously to the feast of the Ascension we were also present at the confirmation of three hundred boys and three hundred girls, each very neatly and appropriately dressed, in a sort of sabbath attire, and each holding a lighted wax taper in the hand. The girls were dressed in white, with white veils; and the rich lent veils to those who had not the means of purchasing them. The cathedral, especially about the choir, was crowded to excess. I hired a chair, stood up, and gazed as earnestly as the rest. The interest excited among the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... thou, whose idle knee Rocks earth into a lethargy, And with thy sooty fingers hast benight The world's fair cheeks, blow, blow thy spite; Since thou hast puffed our greater taper, do Puff on, and out the lesser too. If e'er that breath-exiled flame return, Thou hast not blown as it will burn. Sweet Phosphor, bring the day: Light will repay The wrongs of night: sweet ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... I see the taper-stars, the altars gay; And those who crouch and pray; The white-robed crowd in close monastic stole, Who hither fled the world To find the world ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... on that crude and rugged ground she sinks, And soon her seeking had been ended there, But through the trees a fearful glimmer shrinks, And of a hermit's dwelling she is 'ware: At the dull pane a dull-eyed taper blinks, Drowsed with long vigils ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... striking point of the speaker's appearance was the extraordinary brilliancy of his complexion, which shamed with its whiteness that of all fair ladies round, save where open on each cheek a bright red spot gave warning, as did the long thin neck and the taper hands, of sad possibilities, perhaps not far off; possibilities which all saw with an inward sigh, except she whose doting glances, as well as her resemblance to the fair youth, proclaimed her at once his mother, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... fiercely resented, strongly borne pain. Still, the child had no doubt contrived to make her way into the great gloomy cavern of the grim Doctor's heart, and stole constantly further and further in, carrying a ray of sunshine in her hand as a taper to light her way, and illuminate the rude dark pit into which she so ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have a superstition in the East, That Allah, written on a piece of paper, Is better unction than can come of priest, Of rolling incense, and of lighted taper: Holding, that any scrap which bears that name In any characters its front impress'd on, Shall help the finder thro' the purging flame, And give his toasted feet a ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... and out went Edouard's candle. He turned sharply round to Raynal. "Peste!" said he in a vicious whisper. But the other laid his hand on his shoulder and whispered, "Look to the front." He looked, and, his own candle being out, saw a glimmer on ahead. He crept towards it. It was a taper shooting a feeble light across a small aperture. They caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a small apartment. Yet Edouard recognized the carpet of the tapestried room—which was a very large room. Creeping a yard ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... help laughing to hear one fellow bawling out, so that he might be sure to be heard, a promise to Saint Christopher of Paris—the monstrous statue in the great church there—that he would give him a wax taper as big as himself. 'Mind what you promise!' said an acquaintance that stood near him, poking him with his elbow; 'you couldn't pay for it, if you sold all your things at auction.' 'Hold your tongue, you donkey!' said the fellow,—but softly, so that Saint Christopher should ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... which move the bones by their contraction taper for the most part, as before mentioned, into tendons. These are commonly very strong cords, like belts or straps, made ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... having the size and form of a horse, with one straight horn projecting from its forehead. In the museum at Bristol, England, there is a stuffed antelope from Caffraria, which closely answers this description. Its two straight taper horns are so nearly united that in profile they appear ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... hand, with many jewelled rings upon the taper fingers, and the nails, as with all ladies of quality, dyed the deep orange red of henna. Although I knew well that the jealously watchful eyes of her lord were upon me, I made no hesitancy in encompassing the wrist with my own fingers. But the little hand within mine was clenched ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... because of known mental deficiency; and, of those who reached {280} the camps, many, being illiterate, did not take the Alpha test. It is for this reason that the graph for drafted men stops rather short at the lower end; to picture fairly the distribution of intelligence, it should taper off to the left, beyond the zero of the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... obliquely upward into the pot instead of horizontally. The inner ends are secured in position by one or two cords extending to the center frame. The funnels are about 11 or 12 inches deep, and therefore extend about halfway to the center of the pot. They taper rapidly and form a strongly inclined plane, up which the lobsters must climb in their search for the bait. A two-strand manila twine is most commonly used for the funnels. Cotton is also used, but is ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... more subtile sphere of intuitions, loves, faiths, spiritual convictions, which overtop our actual life, and lead it up from grossness to glory, woman is the oracle and priestess. In the basic qualities of our nature man is stronger—woman, in those which, in grace, beauty, and sweetness, taper nicely toward ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... A single taper's feeble flare Makes darker by its lonely light The cold and empty farmsteads square That blackly loom ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... contrivances, for everything." I screamed with delight when she said that, for hadn't I cursed that "curious contrivance" of an inkstand you gave me (Dorothy cursed hers too, no doubt, after her own blessed fashion)? and didn't I curse that execrable "curious contrivance" of a taper you gave me at St. Leonard's, with which I was so enchanted before I used it, and which wasted me by its own small fire every time I did use it, and for the final burning out of which I was so thankful? But are not Hayes's comments on your ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Alice then he would not for a moment have doubted the nature of her feelings toward himself. She did not cry out, nor faint, but her face turned white as the dress she wore, while her hands pressed so tightly together, that her long, taper nails left ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... alabaster and of pearl—none of these things and qualities were altogether human. I felt it and was afraid, and Atene felt it also, for she answered—"I am but a woman. What thou art, thou knowest best. Still a taper cannot shine midst yonder fires or a glow-worm against a fallen star; nor can my mortal flesh compare with the glory thou hast earned from hell in payment for thy gifts and homage to the lord of ill. Yet as woman I am thy equal, and as spirit I shall ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... upon another oft-observed phenomenon in psychical research. I refer to the fact that apparitions ("ghosts") are nearly always seen to be clear and distinct as to the head and upper portions of the body, while they taper off to vapour and "filmy nothingness" in the lower limbs, so that often the feet are not visible at all. While this may be due in part to the fact that the observer's attention is not directed to the lower limbs, but more ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... what has become of the four other fingers or digits? We find in the places of the second and fourth digits only two slender splint-like bones, about two-thirds as long as the cannon bone, which gradually taper to their lower ends and bear no finger joints, or, as they are termed, phalanges. Sometimes, small bony or gristly nodules are to be found at the bases of these two metacarpal splints, and it is probable that these represent rudiments of the first and fifth toes. Thus, the part of the horse's ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... sort of thing only a few years," said Hallowell. "I rather think it will not be many years now before we shall not even need the initial germ of life to enable us to create but can do it by pure chemical means, just as a taper is lighted by ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... young and tender radishes, and arrange in a glass dish with the taper ends meeting. Scatter bits of cracked ice among them. An inch of the stem, if left on, serve as ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... wandered about the desolate city, until he came to a very high tower, from one window of which shone out the light of a taper. He threw open the door, rushed up the tower stair, and hastened ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... you've gathered them for me, I know!' said Cynthia, sitting down and beginning to feed herself daintily, touching them lightly with the ends of her taper fingers, and dropping each ripe berry into her open mouth. When she had eaten about half she ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and exquisite a collection. Pure, thin, rain-water Madeira, full threescore years in bottle! Pale, limpid Port, whose color had long since gone with age, and left only the musk-like odor; flasks of Johannisberg of pearly light; bottles of Tokay for lips of cardinals; tall, slim stems of the taper flasks of the Rhine; while the ruby hues of wine from the Rhone stood clustering about amid pyramids of pine-apples, oranges, and bananas, and all loading the air of the ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... Sir Nigel rested on his hand, his attitude was as one bowed and drooping 'neath despondency; the light of the taper fell full upon his head, bringing it out in beautiful profile. It was not his capture alone which had made him thus, the boy felt and knew; the complicated evils which attended his king and country in his imprisonment were yet not sufficient to crush that spirit to the earth. It was some other ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... venerable sweetness. Age, probably in consequence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. It would be difficult to imagine anything at once so fleshy and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's women; the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... liars all at once, by this story: I will put it into rough English for you.—"I couldn't help laughing to hear one fellow bawling out, so that he might be sure to be heard, a promise to Saint Christopher of Paris—the monstrous statue in the great church there—that he would give him a wax taper as big as himself. 'Mind what you promise!' said an acquaintance that stood near him, poking him with his elbow; 'you couldn't pay for it, if you sold all your things at auction.' 'Hold your tongue, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... very valuable gold watch, a gold watch chain, 2 gold watch keys, a gold seal, a silver mustard pot and spoon, a silver salt stand, a scent bottle, a china basket, 3 china jugs, a china cup and saucer and mug 2 taper candlesticks, a ring stand, 2 spill cups, a card stand, a lamp, a claret jug, a pair of decanters, 6 hock glasses, 14 claret glasses, 6 finger glasses, and a set of china tea things. The donor has found true riches and peace to his soul ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... enjoyed the privilege of conferring under certain conditions the same advantages as were to be gained by the great pilgrimage to Rome. The pilgrims kept the 'holy vigil'—that is to say, they passed an entire night in prayer before the relics with a lighted taper either fixed at their side or carried in the hand. The pilgrimage and the ancient association of St. Foy ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... quivering nostrils, where the red color comes! The Sultan himself hath chosen this beauty for Her Majesty—she who perchance will never mount him, scorning to do aught that would make the blood flow warmer through the veins;—going daily to San Nicolo with her taper and knowing naught of pleasure in life; unless it verily pleaseth her to grieve! What availeth it to ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... deed to be committed. The horse in the stable, I dare say, belonged to some belated traveler caught like ourselves in a storm afar from an inn. Marked you how she answered me not when I spoke on't? How the wind howls, and how blue the taper burns! 'Sblood! I'd sooner be out ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... addresses upon the subject. The passages are almost innumerable, intersecting each other in every direction and ranging in some places many stories above each other, but still, as you pass along in the dim light of a little taper, it appears much like a subterranean stone-quarry ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... to see what she would do, but I was not certain how the dog might relish the intrusion; so I put my hand over my quatre, and snapping my finger and thumb, Sneezer immediately rose and came to my bedside. I immediately judged, from the comical expression of his face, as seen by the taper of the intruder, that he thought it was some piece of fun, for he walked quietly up, and confronting the old lady, deliberately took the candlestick out of her hand. The little black urchin thereupon began shouting, "Perro Demonio—Perro ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... maladie, and sicknesse all the yeare. When every one receyved hath this odour, great and small, Then one takes up the pan with Coales, and Franckensence, and all, Another takes the loafe, whom all the rest do follow here, And round about the house they go, with torch or taper clere, That neither bread nor meat do want, nor witch with dreadful charme Have powre to hurt their children, or to do their cattell harme. There are, that three nightes onely do perfourme this foolish geare, To this intent, and thinke themselves ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... fine, The sea-shell tint of their taper tips, The sight of them stirred my blood like wine, Oh, to hold them again ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... much time to think while he forms his letters. He did not, therefore, reply at once to Frank's remark about the holidays, but was silent till he had concluded his note, read it three times over, sealed it by the taper he slowly lighted, and then, giving it to Frank, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... previously. He said to me, curtly, that if by any chance the Confederates should reoccupy Alexandria, he could very well afford to relinquish his property. He employed a smart barkeeper, who led guests by a retired way to the drinking-rooms. Here, with the gas burning at a taper point, cobblers, cocktails, and juleps were mixed stealthily and swallowed in the darkness. The bar was like a mint to the proprietor; he only feared discovery and prohibition. It would not accord with the chaste pages of this narrative to tell how some of the noblest residences in Alexandria ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... The taper had burnt out. We lay side by side striving to sleep, while distress of mind and a wounded heart brought the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... also come to the end of my days; for just as I felt sure I was distancing those behind me, there came running swiftly toward me from the other end of the dim corridor an officer with sword drawn, and I saw he would meet me exactly at the head of the grand staircase. The light from a tall taper fell on his face as he neared the staircase. It was the Chevalier ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... of extraordinary dignity, sitting upright and stiff like a pagan idol, dressed in a magnificent and fantastic purple robe, with a great double ruff, like a huge collar, behind her head; a long taper waist, voluminous skirts spread all over the cushions, embroidered with curious figures and creatures. Over her shoulders, but opened in front so as to show the ropes of pearls and the blaze of jewels on the stomacher, was a purple velvet mantle lined with ermine, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... grass held sacred by the Hindoos and freely used at their religious ceremonies. Its leaves are very long and taper to ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... dear friend and lover of the PIPE; He us'd to say, one pipe of Kirkman's best Gave life a zest. To him 'twas meat, and drink, and physic, To see the friendly vapour Curl round his midnight taper, And the black fume Clothe all the room, In clouds as dark as science metaphysic. So still he smok'd, and drank, and crack'd his joke; And, had he single tarried He might have smok'd, and still grown old in smoke: But RICHARD married. His wife was one, who carried ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... liberated by acting upon the substance with a stronger acid, and then applying the lime-water test. The presence of large quantities of carbonic acid in a gaseous mixture can be readily detected by plunging into the vessel a lighted taper, which will be immediately extinguished. This ought always to be adopted in a brewery, where many fatal accidents have happened through workmen going down into empty fermenting vats and wells without ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... his soul; now that he had his secret shared, and some hope in front of him, he seemed like a new man, his feet went lightly on the earth, and his breath was good to him again. Yet was terror still at his elbow; and ever and again, as the wind blows out a taper, hope died in him, and he saw the flames toss and the red ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yellowish, while the larch tops were filled with sweet and tender green. Like the masts and yards of a ship, which are gradually hidden as the sails are set, so these green sails unfurling concealed the tall masts and taper branches of the fir. Afar the great hills were bare, wind-swept and dry. The glass-green river wound along the plain, and the sea bloomed blue under the sun, blue by the distant shore, darkening like a, level cloud where a dim ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... coming; "tarry here and honour my roof." Another came up, shook us by the hand, his eye sparkling with kind feelings. A third took our mules by the bridles and led us to his own door, when half-a-dozen pretty girls, with flashing dark eyes and long taper fingers, insisted on undoing our leggings ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... they could make out the sky-pointed taper of the spacer and the auto-pilot landed them beside that ship in the middle of an area well lighted by the steady shaft of light from the tripod standing where the atom lamp had been on the night they had made their ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... spread a camel's hide, had covered a water-skin with a burnoose for a pillow, and had left, near it, a coiled wax-taper and a box of matches. Abdullah untwined his turban, loosened his sash, felt something escape him, fell on his knees, groped, felt a paper, rose, went to the tent's door, recognized the invoice which ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... in diameter the bundles become broader and broader toward the outside, and taper to a point toward the centre, appearing wedge-shaped, the inner ends projecting into the pith. The outer limits of the bundles are not nearly so distinct, and it is not easy to tell when the phloem of the bundles ends and the ground tissue of ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... gentle hermit of the glen, | and guide thy lonely way To where yon taper cheers the vale | with ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... evil influences of the world feel free to tempt them. In all the dark night that may yet await them, when men shall so beset them as to threaten the sustaining influence of patriotism, grant from the dawn eternal the lighted taper of hope that shall throw its beams athwart the darkness, and furnish a cheering glimpse of the fair end of all things. Watch with thine all seeing eye and nail with thine omnipotent hand the machinations of those who ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... rest on them every morning before he began his tasks. These were the old-fashioned boxes that had garnished his mother's toilette, when he, a sickly child, slept in her dressing-room,—the silver taper-stand, which the young advocate had bought for her with his first five-guinea fee,—a row of small packets inscribed with her hand, and containing the hair of those of her offspring that had died before her,—his father's snuff-box, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... badger. The second sort is said to have three white stripes: our sailors caught one, but it got away again. The mole here is larger than in Europe; the upper part of the body is of a greyish brown, the lower part an ash grey; the legs are covered with a white fur, and the taper tail is one-fifth of the length of the body. A shrew-mouse also was caught. Two or three kinds of large cats are said to have been seen; a mustela, something of the nature of the Lutreola, was shot near the Rio Sacramento. The sea-otter still abounds here, but its hair is brownish, and ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... been put out, and the gloom of the room was only lightened by a single bed-room taper, which, as it stood near the door, only served to render palpable the darkness of the further end of the chamber. For half an hour Lord Cashel walked to and fro, anxious, wretched, and in doubt, instead of going to his room. How he wished that Lord Ballindine had married his ward, and taken her off ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the check and read every word on it twice—not because I needed to; I was playing for time to think. Then I twisted it up in a taper, held it to the blaze in the fireplace, and lighted a cigarette with it. Dad kept his finger-tips together and watched me without any expression whatsoever in his face. I took three deliberate puffs, picked up ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... vicar was sitting in a chair, leaning his chin on the knobbed handle of his umbrella. He rose and lit a taper for her with a match from a little green pot on the table. And Mrs Lawford, with trembling fingers, sealed the letter, as he directed, with his ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... the Chinese Room; the sun streams through the windows, illuminating the wondrous golden dragons standing out in bold relief from the burnished lacquer work, decorating still further with light and shade the delicate silk embroideries thin taper hands have woven with infinite pains. The walls are hung with rice paper, depicting the conventional scenes of the conventional ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... safely moored, and the door of the building unlocked; and by the light of a wax taper, which we had brought on purpose, we found ourselves in a large empty room, without any fire-place. A heap of dead wood was soon collected at the entrance; and a glorious fire lighted up the small enclosure which surrounded the building, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... entertainment, but gloomy and crestfallen. His mother spoke to him, but it was as a queen to a rebellious prince, her son who was not yet forgiven. We two slipped away from the company, and went up to the rooms assigned to me: but there, as we began a free conversation, our mother, taper in hand, appeared with her pale face. Did I want anything? Was everything quite as I wished it? She had peeped in at the dearest children, who were sleeping like cherubs. How she did caress them, and delight over them! How she was charmed ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and well formed. Medium sized mouth, small lip, thin upper lip, protrudes when he talks. Chin pointed and prominent. Head of medium size. Neck short and of medium length. Hands small and fingers tapering, showed no signs of hard labor. Broad shoulders, taper waist, straight figure, strong looking man; manner not gentlemanly, ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... serves for a draught. The earth over this burrow is perforated by circular holes, which communicate with the cavity below; and in these holes are set earthen pots, generally about three to each fire, which are large in the middle, and taper towards the bottom, so that the fire acts upon a large part of their surface. Each of these pots generally contains about eight or ten gallons, and it is surprising to see with how small a quantity of fire they may be kept boiling; a palm-leaf, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... at the same time, gently pressed the girl's taper fingers. They were soft and velvety to his touch. A delightful thrill shot through him at the contact. The flower-girl evinced no displeasure. Clearly she was accustomed to such advances. The Viscount slipped a gold coin of considerable ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... not so well, and so clear in her intellects, [so much alive, she used to say,] if she exceeded this proportion. If she slept not, she chose to rise sooner. And in winter had her fire laid, and a taper ready burning to light it; not loving to give trouble to the servants, 'whose harder work, and later hours of going to bed,' she used to ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... could not refrain from stopping once or twice to catch these lovely creatures; and when he succeeded in doing so, and placed one on the palm of his hand, the light emitted from it was more brilliant than that of a small taper, and much more beautiful, for it was of a bluish colour, and very intense,—more like the light reflected from a jewel than a flame of fire. He could have read a book by means of it ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... gray growths. It was the hub of an oblong wheel, and from it, at regular distances, like spokes, ran the outgoing canyons. Here a dull red color predominated over the fading yellow. The corners of wall bluntly rose, scarred and scrawled, to taper into towers and serrated ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... of this girdle are its great length, 17 feet (5 m. 2), its even taper diminishing from 5 in. (12.7 cm.) in width to 1-7/8 in. (4.8 cm.) in width, its elaborate design and excellent workmanship. Perhaps the chief of these characteristics is the taper. It is most probable, as Mr. Lee points out, that in the weaving the warp ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... your bill of fare. Fairies you have by scores in flesh-coloured tights, spangles, and paucity of petticoats; gnomes of every description, from the gigantic glittering diamond beetle, to the grotesque and dusky tadpole. Epicene princes, whose taper limbs and swelling busts are well worth the scrutiny of the opera-glass—dragons vomiting at once red flames and witticisms about the fountains in Trafalgar Square—Dan O'Connell figuring in the feathers of a Milesian owl—and the Seven Champions of Christendom smoking cigars ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... your conscience by such an act before the bells announce the hour of its birth. As the stars appear in the heavens, tiny oil lamps are lighted in every house, and among all devout Roman Catholics the image of the Virgin is illuminated with a taper. ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... Father was borne slowly along, seated on the sedia gestatoria, which was carried by twelve attendants in scarlet cloaks. The Tiara added dignity to the noble figure of the Pontiff. In his left hand, which was veiled with white silk, embroidered with gold, he held a lighted wax taper, while his right was left free to bless the people as he passed along. The correspondent of the London Times, who was a Protestant, says: "Looking over the sea of heads placed between me and the procession, I observed that all knelt before Pius IX., the meek ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... with yce, and was in proportion round like to a Porpose, being about twelue foote long, and in bignesse answerable, hauing a horne of two yards long growing out of the snoute or nostrels. [Sidenote: The finding of an Vnicornes horne.] This horne is wreathed and straite, like in fashion to a Taper made of waxe, and may truely be thought to be the sea Vnicorne.[68] This home is to be seene and reserued as a Iewell by the Queenes Maiesties commandement, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... received a reviving impulse in the Reformation; yet even this was meteor-like, and seemed but the transient glow of some mere natural emotion. The fire which then flashed so brilliantly upon the altar of home, has now become taper-like and sepulchral; and the altar of family religion, like the altar of Jehovah upon Mt. Carmel, has been demolished, and forsaken. Only here and there do we find a Christian home erect and surround a Christian altar. Parents seem now ashamed to serve the Lord at home. ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... same evening, about midnight, when silence rested on the monastery, and the priests were all wrapped in slumber, Chan, with a lighted taper in his hand, stole with noiseless footsteps along the dark passages into the chamber of death where his beloved lay. Kneeling beside the coffin with a heart full of emotion, in trembling accents he called upon Willow to listen to the story ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... apparatus of the last mysterious ceremony of the church. The shoulders of Salvator were laid bare, and anointed with the consecrated oil; some prayed fervently, others wept, and all even still hoped; but the taper which the Doctor Catanni held to the lips of Salvator while the Viaticum was administered, burned brightly and steadily! Life's last sigh had transpired, as religion ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... 'twas a vision! his hour was not yet, And waking, he turn'd on his pallet of straw, And a form by his side he could never forget, By the pale misty light of a taper he saw. "'Tis I! 'tis thy Winifred!"—softly she said, "Arouse thee, and follow—be bold, never fear! There was danger abroad, but my errand has sped, I promised to save ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... for their six o'clock dinner. On the day week after my first visit she was out of Fisher's hands, and as I left her late that afternoon I thought I had never seen a prettier little craft. Her tall, slim, taper spars had a jaunty little rake aft, and were encumbered with only so much rigging as was absolutely necessary to prevent them from going over the side. Her yards, though light, were of immense spread, and the new suit of sails with which she had been ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... lamps are burning, side chapels pass unnoticed. If you are looking for inscriptions or want to admire the old master's picture, with which every church claims to be endowed, you must get the verger with his taper. Altars are gaudily decorated and statues bejeweled and be (artificial) flowered in Hispano-Italian fashion. The mairie, reconstructed from an ancient palace or castle, was more interesting. Beside the mairie a medieval square tower, ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... features an address by the pastor, Dr. Tanner, one by the presiding Bishop, John Albert Johnson, and an original poem by Dr. Robert E. Ford. The most spectacular number was the burning of the fourteen thousand dollar mortgage deed in the presence of the vast audience, the taper being applied by a committee of elderly members who had been connected with the church for a score or more ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... is a small wood called Losel's, of a few acres, that was lately furnished with a set of oaks of a peculiar growth and great value; they were tall and taper-like firs, but standing near together had very small heads, only a little brush without any large limbs. About twenty years ago the bridge at the Toy, near Hampton Court, being much decayed, some trees were wanted for ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... though in stage-coaches, where passengers are properly considered as so much luggage, the ingenious coachman stows half a dozen with perfect ease into the place of four; for well he contrives that the fat hostess, or well-fed alderman, may take up no more room than the slim miss, or taper master; it being the nature of guts, when well squeezed, to give way, and to lie in a narrow compass; yet in these vehicles, which are called, for distinction's sake, gentlemen's coaches, though they are ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... resembling a butcher's cleaver in miniature. Nature generally denies him beard, so he shaves what a sailor would term the fore and after part of his head. He reaps his hirsute crop dry, using no lather. His cue is pieced out by silken braid, so interwoven as gradually to taper into a slim tassel, something like a Missouri mule-driver's "black snake" whip-lash. To lose this cue is to lose caste and standing among his fellows. No misfortune ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... whole width between us! Besides—we are both past our youth! And, according to certain highly instructed scientists and philosophers, the senses and affections grow numb with age. I do not believe this theory myself—for the jejune love of youth is as a taper's flame to the great and passionate tenderness of maturity, when the soul, and not the body, claims its due; when love is not dragged down to the vulgar level of mere cohabitation, after the fashion of the animals in a farmyard, but rises to the best height ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... our pipes and struck matches to light them. They were wax taper matches and made a good blaze. "Wonder what it'll be like to eat civilized grub again and sleep in a bed," said Easton meditatively, as he puffed ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... would be well for all to learn the lesson (not least he for whom the ceremony is primarily intended), which is symbolically taught when a Pope is crowned. The Master of the Ceremonies takes a lighted taper in one hand, and in the other a reed with a handful of flax fastened to it. The flax flares up for a moment, and then the flame dies away into thin, almost imperceptible, ashes, which fall at the Pontiff's feet, ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... undertake"continued the old bachelor, looking at himself in the glass"to make it somewhat decent. And now let us set to breakfastwith what appetite we may. Well may I say to Hector, as Sir Isaac Newton did to his dog Diamond, when the animal (I detest dogs) flung down the taper among calculations which had occupied the philosopher for twenty years, and consumed the whole mass of materialsDiamond, Diamond, thou little knowest the mischief thou ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... fear but labor began to overcome him; his breath grew short, and his knees trembled, and he was on the point of lying down, in resignation to his fate, when he beheld, through the brambles, the glimmer of a taper. He advanced toward the light, and finding that it proceeded from the cottage of a hermit, he called humbly at the door, and obtained admission. The old man set before him such provisions as he had collected for himself, on which ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... devoid of bark, limbs, or foliage. By triangulation Lord Longlegs determined its altitude; Herr Spider measured its circumference at the base and computed the circumference at its top by a mathematical demonstration based upon the warrant furnished by the uniform degree of its taper upward. It was considered a very extraordinary find; and since it was a tree of a hitherto unknown species, Professor Woodlouse gave it a name of a learned sound, being none other than that of Professor Bull ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... contrivance. The inner recess of this was supposed to hold a relic of Buddha—some whispered a finger, some a piece of the great teacher's robe; but whatever the holy emblem, both place and shrine were surrounded with a veil of superstitious mystery and held in awe. A lonely taper burned before the shrine, dimly lighting a small opening covered with ground glass and disclosed above a written warning to all passers-by to stop and offer ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... a church. I hold a torch in my hand and light one taper after another. For every taper that is lighted, the church grows larger and more beautiful. But I am a thief. If I am caught I must be buried alive, and now the church-bells are ringing. I hear ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... the dark room with perfect ease, struck a match, lighted a taper and went swiftly and softly about. He touched the taper to one candle after another,—they seemed to be everywhere,—and won from the dark a faint twilight, that yielded slowly to a growing mellow splendor of light. I have often watched the acolytes in ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... mumming came—the carnival mumming that as a boy I had loved so well, and that, ever since I had come and stitched under my Apollo and Crispin, I had never been loth to meddle and mix in, going mad with my lit taper, like the rest, and my whistle of the Befana, and all the salt and sport of a war of wits such as old Rome has always heard in midwinter since the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... which were long, He had twenty-four packs,— Which was coming it strong, Yet I state but the facts; And we found on his nails, which were taper, What is frequent ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... of her Maker. She was not more than twenty years of age, and, during the whole ceremony, her countenance, which was pleasing, bore the evident marks of inward satisfaction and holy veneration. The nuns, who before had been standing round the chapel, each holding a burning taper, now tenderly embraced their intended sister, and placed the crown of virginity upon her temples, when an anathema, was with great solemnity, pronounced against all who should attempt to make her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... and barons bold, In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, With store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize Of wit or arms, while both contend To win her grace whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In saffron robe, with taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry; Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... forsake the synagogue for the opera-house, or the gentility chapel, in which a disciple of Mr. Platitude, in a white surplice, preaches a sermon at noon- day from a desk, on each side of which is a flaming taper. It is making them abandon their ancient literature, their "Mischna," their "Gemara," their "Zohar," for gentility novels, "The Young Duke," the most unexceptionably genteel book ever written, being the principal favourite. It makes the young ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... save her, and resigned myself entirely to the will of God; he gave, and he can take away. Picture to yourself the state of alarm, care, and anxiety in which I have been kept for the last fortnight. She died without being conscious of any thing—her life went out like a taper. Three days ago she confessed, received the sacrament and extreme unction; but since that time she has been constantly delirious and rambling, until this afternoon at twenty-one minutes after five, when she was seized with convulsions, and immediately ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... thoughtful writer already quoted,)—"the fact is not to be denied; the Religion of Nature has had the opportunity of rekindling her faded taper by the Gospel light,—whether furtively or unconsciously availed of. Let her not dissemble the obligation, and make a boast of the splendour, as though it were originally her own; or had always, in her ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... one struggles along with much difficulty: lying on one's chest, and with a lighted taper in one hand, the other holding a rope that has been made fast to a tree outside, one slides down by degrees feet foremost. The passages are usually narrowed and choked by the rubbish, and descend nearly perpendicularly to where, lower down, they open wider ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... is the chamber and pleasant the light, Tranquil and innocent, tender and calm; Sweet are the thoughts that approach us at night, Sweet as the breeze with its perfumy balm. And if I am reading the happy Word, Or saying my prayers by the taper's glow, I wish that my Harry had this preferr'd To the painted ...
— Harry • Fanny Wheeler Hart
... they have dragged the mouldering carcass of paganism from the grave, animated her lifeless form with a spark stolen from the sacred altar, arrayed her in the spoils of Christianity, re-lighted her extinguished taper at the torch of revelation, dignified her with the name of natural religion, and exalted her in the temple of reason, as a goddess, able, without divine assistance, to guide mankind to truth and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... or fifty years of age, I could not say. He was tall, had a large forehead, straight nose, a clearly cut mouth, beautiful teeth, with fine taper hands, indicative of a highly nervous temperament. This man was certainly the most admirable specimen I had ever met. One particular feature was his eyes, rather far from each other, and which could take in nearly a quarter of the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... the level of the ground by a flight of steps into one of the narrow underground passages, one sees on either side, by the light of the taper with which he is provided, range upon range of tombs cut, as has been described, in the walls that border the pathway. Usually the arrangement is careful, but with an indiscriminate mingling of larger and smaller graves, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... he was smoking, but which, from a certain sucking sound which about this time began to be heard from the bottom, appeared to be giving notice that it would soon require replenishment from a certain canister which, together with a lighted taper, stood ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... indeed an object deserving of particular admiration. It is next to that of Strasbourg in height; being 432 feet of Vienna measurement. It may be said to begin to taper from the first stage or floor; and is distinguished for its open and sometimes intricate fretwork. About two-thirds of its height, just above the clock, and where the more slender part of the spire commences, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... went home, and in the night there came to the bazar an artful thief disguised in the habit of the merchant, and pulling out keys from his sleeve, said to the watchman of the market, "Light me this wax-candle." The watchman took the taper and went to light it,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... treasure. The fifth light, Goodliest of all, is by such love inspired, That all your world craves tidings of its doom: Within, there is the lofty light, endow'd With sapience so profound, if truth be truth, That with a ken of such wide amplitude No second hath arisen. Next behold That taper's radiance, to whose view was shown, Clearliest, the nature and the ministry Angelical, while yet in flesh it dwelt. In the other little light serenely smiles That pleader for the Christian temples, he Who did provide Augustin of his lore. Now, if thy mind's ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... at all points, shining and soft as satin, with the firm muscles quivering beneath at the first touch of excitement to the high mettle and finely-strung organization; the head small, lean, racer-like, "blood" all over; with the delicate taper ears, almost transparent in full light; well ribbed-up, fine shoulders, admirable girth and loins; legs clean, slender, firm, promising splendid knee action; sixteen hands high, and up to thirteen stone; clever enough for anything, trained to close and open ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... through the tapestry door, which led to her apartments. Esmond stood by the fireplace, blankly staring after her. Indeed, he scarce seemed to see until she was gone, and then her image was impressed upon him and remained forever fixed upon his memory. He saw her retreating, the taper lighting up her marble face, her scarlet lip quivering, and her shining golden hair. He went to his own room and to bed, but could not get to sleep until daylight, and ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... Connected with Saharan female dress is naturally that of female beauty. The beau ideal of an Arab beauty, according to the Arabian poets Havivi and Montannibi, is, that "Her person should be slender like the bending rush, or taper lance of Yemen." This is also the beau ideal of female beauty amongst Touaricks. I have seen no fat fed-up women amongst Touaricks, like those in such esteem and the bon-ton of the Moors. The enbonpoint of Mooresses is well known, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... soul of me is dead, and I know not but that at any moment I may flicker out like a spent taper, and become as one of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the gleaming taper's light, Adorns and cheers our way;[399-1] And still, as darker grows the night, Emits ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Vinicius sprang to the interior. The little atrium was empty, and dark with smoke. Feeling for the door which led to the sleeping-rooms, he saw the gleaming flame of a small lamp, and approaching it saw the lararium in which was a cross instead of lares. Under the cross a taper was burning. Through the head of the young catechumen, the thought passed with lightning speed that that cross sent him the taper with which he could find Lygia; hence he took the taper and searched for the sleeping-rooms. He found one, pushed aside the curtains, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... shoulders, not less transparently white. She wears a gown of rich silk, opening in front to display a chemisette of the most delicate cambric, which is scarcely less delicate than her skin. Her slender arms are without bracelets, and her taper fingers without rings. As she stands behind the queen, holding her majesty's fan and gloves, she is obliged, from her deafness, to lean her fair face with its sunny hair first to the right side, then to the left, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... young lad to the porter. Then the porter lifted a taper, and, followed by the young lad, began to make the tour of the church. There was not a moment to lose. Chicot softly opened the door of the confessional, slipped in, and shut the door after him. They passed close by him, ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... In the St. Sebaldus Church, Nuremburg, is a carving in stone showing a nun in the embrace of a monk. In Strassburg a hog and a goat may be seen carrying a sleeping fox as a sacred relic, in advance a bear with a cross and a wolf with a taper. An ass is reading mass at an altar. In Wurzburg Cathedral are the pillars of Boaz and Jachin, and in the altar of the Church of Doberan, in Mecklenburg, placed as Masons use them, and a most significant scene in which ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... be a wilderness, where the ashes of those we have loved repose. Where the heart has laid down what it loved most, there it is desirous of laying itself down. No sculptured marble, no enduring monument, no honorable inscription, no ever-burning taper that would drive away the darkness of the tomb, can soften our sense of the reality of death, and hallow to our feelings the ground which is to cover us, like the consciousness that we shall sleep, dust to dust, with the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... saddled and equipped for the journey. The company were quickly mounted on three spirited horses, and reached Cherry Valley at eleven o'clock P. M.—a place Nelly had never seen before. No cottage window showed the light of a taper; but the light of the full moon fell in tranquil loveliness upon the rounded hill-tops, and the glittering stars added their beauty to the heavens, while the green forest and flowering shrubbery clothed ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... divan and bade Al-Rashid sit over against him and signed to Ja'afar and Masrur to take their places in due degree,[FN115] whilst the negroes and the eunuchs stood expecting their commands for suit and service. Presently was brought to them a huge waxen taper which lighted up the whole of the hall and the young house-master accosted the King and said to him, "Well come and welcome and fair welcome to our guests who to us are the most esteemed of folk and may Allah honour ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... hearer's blood, as though that gentle breath had been the ice-blast of the pole. "I do not know, mother," she replied, "but I have such a pain here." She pressed her hands slowly over her brow, and with her white taper fingers put back the loosened hair. Then in hurried accents whispered,—"Do not tell him—do not let them take me away—but God help me, mother!" she added wildly: "I think I am MAD!" and it was true. She sank beneath ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... the relations of the disks, C, and the abutment disks, B, and gear. The piston disks and gear are attached to the driving shaft, H, and the abutment disks and gear are attached to the shaft, K. These shafts, H and K, as above stated, run in taper phosphor-bronze bearings, which are adjustable for wear or other causes by the screw-caps, O. The whole mechanism is kept rigidly in place by the flanged hub, r, bolted securely to the cylinder head, F. These flanged heads project through the cylinder head, touching the piston disk, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... the tyrant call'd by night, Where thick and gloomy grates shut out the light; From the low roof a smoky taper hung, And wide around ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... the prisoner gleamed like the flash of an expiring taper, wild and fitful, on our entering forms. He was dreadfully altered,—I should scarcely have recognized him through the gloomy shade of his long-neglected hair, and thick, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... herself; it was her duty to this man, finished, mature, yet full of unawakened possibility; it was her duty to that large, vague world that his life touched, a world where her young faiths and vigors would bring a light such as her mother's gay little taper could never spread. These thoughts, and others, flashed through Imogen's mind, with the swiftness and exactitude of a drowning vision. Yet, after the long moment of vivid realization, it was at its height that ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... supply their place, my pretty dear, and be your lover into the bargain. Those coarse garments shall be changed for silks and satins,—that shining hair shall be made radiant with gems,—jewels shall sparkle on that fair neck, and on those taper fingers,—you shall ride in a carriage, and have servants to wait on you,—and you shall sleep on a downy bed, and live in a grand house, like this. Say, will not all these fine things be better than selling fruit in the ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... through the key-hole and saw the two sisters come into their room, preceded by the polite Don Francisco, who carried a taper, and, after lighting a night-lamp, bade them good night and retired. Then my two beauties, their door once locked, sat down on the sofa and completed their night toilet, which, in that fortunate climate, is similar to the costume of our first mother. Lucrezia, knowing that I was waiting ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a shy-bold glance straight into his; it was as if those slim, taper fingers of hers had twanged the strings of the lyre of his nerves. "You despise all this sort of ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... blue taper's trembling light, No more I waste the wakeful night, Intent with endless view to pore The schoolmen and the sages o'er: Their books from wisdom widely stray, Or point at best the longest way. I'll seek a readier path, and go Where ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... of Sir Isaac Newton's papers, by his little dog "Diamond" upsetting a lighted taper upon his desk, by which the elaborate calculations of many years were in a moment destroyed, is a well-known anecdote, and need not be repeated: it is said that the loss caused the philosopher such profound grief that it seriously ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... golden shield, and showed us the hole in the rock of Calvary, where the cross was planted. Close beside it was the fissure produced by the earthquake which followed the Crucifixion. But, to my eyes, aided by the light of the dim wax taper, it was no violent rupture, such as an earthquake would produce, and the rock did not appear to be the same as that of which Jerusalem is built. As we turned to leave, a monk appeared with a bowl of sacred rose-water, which he sprinkled on our hands, bestowing a double portion on a rosary of sandal-wood ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... screws passing through holes in the sides of the metal, and then into the wood itself. The wood, for about a foot above the barb, should be about three quarters of an inch in diameter, and from thence gradually taper to about a quarter of an inch in thickness until the end of the spear ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... each holding a long lighted taper, stand for hours making the sign of the Cross, while the gorgeously-robed priest chanted the service and made sundry waves with his hands and gave certain swings with the incense-burner. The responses were made by a group of men with beautiful, well-trained voices, but the people looked ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... me see; is not the leaf turned down Where I left reading? Here it is, I think. How ill this taper burns! ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... cigars? They're some I've just got out from London, but I'm not quite satisfied with them myself," he grumbled, pushing toward me the silver box and its attendant taper. ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... mean to smoke only this once. That is, I didn't mean to at first, but after I got to smoking I thought it would be a good plan to taper off." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... the bed a taper Shall ever with matches be, A pencil and piece of paper, To note what occurs to me. * * * * * Since then I have tried, but the late joke, As seen in my bedside scrawl, Is always so poor,—that the great joke, I'm sure, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... kidneys. He checked his steps in front of some long two-wheeled carts, covered with round awnings, and containing sides of pork hung on each side of the vehicle over a bed of straw. Seen from the back end, the interiors of the carts looked like recesses of some tabernacle, like some taper-lighted chapel, such was the glow of all the bare flesh they contained. And on the beds of straw were lines of tin cans, full of the blood that had trickled from the pigs. Thereupon Florent was attacked ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... endures. There is reason to believe that the extinction of a whole group of species is generally a slower process than their production: if their appearance and disappearance be represented, as before, by a vertical line of varying thickness the line is found to taper more gradually at its upper end, which marks the progress of extermination, than at its lower end, which marks the first appearance and the early increase in number of the species. In some cases, however, the extermination of whole groups, as ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... small table; a few minutes passed in silence, when he returned and held the door open for the bishop of London, who entered, bearing the viaticum, as the last communion of the sick was then called, and attended by an acolyte, who bore a lighted taper before him ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... the sun is southing; the generous sweep of his deep elastic belly, nobly pulped out with rich nurture, showed what the power of his brain must be, and seemed to undulate, time for time, with the vibrant vigilance of his large wise eyes. His latter end was consistent also. An elegant taper run of counter, coming almost to a cylinder, as a mackered does, boldly developed with a hugeous spread to a glorious amplitude of swallow-tail. His colour was all that can well be desired, but ill-described by any poor word-palette. ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... in a case, within a chest, sealed with many seals, and since the king's death, it had been brought up by the nobles, who closely guarded both it and the queen, into her apartments, and there examined and replaced it in the chest. The next night, one of the queen's ladies upset a wax taper, without being aware of it, and before the fire was discovered, and put out, the corner of the chest was singed, and a hole burnt in the blue velvet cushion that lay on the top. Upon this, the lords had caused the chest to be taken down again into the vault, and had fastened ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... heavy brows as with a pang of fiercely resented, strongly borne pain. Still, the child had no doubt contrived to make her way into the great gloomy cavern of the grim Doctor's heart, and stole constantly further and further in, carrying a ray of sunshine in her hand as a taper to light her way, and illuminate the rude dark pit into which ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sand-hills,' inhabited by armies of rabbits, and haunted by peewits and gulls, the Burrows are brightened by masses of wild-flowers, from the great mullein—once known as hedge-taper, because of its pale torch of blossoms—to the tiny delicate rose-pink bells of the bog-pimpernel. 'To the left were rich, alluvial marshes, covered with red cattle sleeping in the sun, and laced with creeks and flowing dykes.... Beyond again ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... often lay their eggs on the shelving cliffs exposed to the sweep of the ocean gales. These are shaped as if designed by nature to prevent them rolling off the rocks. They are very large at one {41} end and toward the other taper sharply. When the wind blows they simply swing ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... fame achieved there; but far away to the west, where Nature received him on her flowery lap, beside his own Avon; in the shades where his genius first grew familiar with the shapes of beauty, sublimity, and terror, and whither he retired at last 'to husband out life's taper' amid the common charities of home; to this spot it is that you must repair, if you would drink freshly of that well-spring of associations which hallows the footsteps of England's immortal dramatist. In like manner, one might say, that it is ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... at every pore—a thousand merry figures come to meet you: maidens clad in the gay costumes of the elder time, all fluttering with ribbons, rosy cheeks and lips!—maidens who smile, and with their taper fingers point at those who follow them; gay shepherds, gallant in silk stockings and embroidered doublets, carrying their crooks wreathed round with flowers; while over all, the sun laughs gladly, and the breezes bear away the merry voices, sprinkling on the ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... whole range of the maxima of the present race of trotting horses. The same thing is seen in the running of men. Many can run a mile in five minutes; but when one comes to the fractions below, they taper down until somewhere about 4.30 the maximum is reached. Averages of masses have been studied more than averages of maxima and minima. We know from the Registrar-General's Reports, that a certain ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... hour when happy faces Smile around the taper's light; Who will fill our vacant places? Who will sing our ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... repeatedly through melted wax, till stiff and smooth, makes a good taper, for use in sealing letters. It can be twined in fanciful forms, and ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... the light of joy which had lent its most transcendent charms to that heavenly face, was gone. Charles was by her side in a moment. He had her hand clasped in his, while his disengaged one was wound tenderly around her taper waist. ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... a faint suggestion of light in that deeply hidden place, and Young struck a match that he might see to begin his explorations. "Well, I'll be shot," he exclaimed, as the wax-taper shed its clear light around us, "if here ain't a conductor's lantern hangin' up all ready for us, an' a can o' kerosene oil!" As he lighted the lantern, and the letters F. C. C. showed clearly on the glass, he added, in a tone of still greater amazement: ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... elder brother, the Lord Ferdinand, Is come to visit you, and sends you word, 'Cause once he rashly made a solemn vow Never to see you more, he comes i' th' night; And prays you gently neither torch nor taper Shine in your chamber. He will kiss your hand, And reconcile himself; but for his vow He dares not ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... O thou, whose idle knee Rocks earth into a lethargy, And with thy sooty fingers hast benight The world's fair cheeks, blow, blow thy spite; Since thou hast puffed our greater taper, do Puff on, and out the lesser too. If e'er that breath-exiled flame return, Thou hast not blown as it will burn. Sweet Phosphor, bring the day: Light will repay The wrongs of night: sweet ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... officiating priest of the day arrived, bearing with him the holy apparatus of the last mysterious ceremony of the church. The shoulders of Salvator were laid bare, and anointed with the consecrated oil; some prayed fervently, others wept, and all even still hoped; but the taper which the Doctor Catanni held to the lips of Salvator while the Viaticum was administered, burned brightly and steadily! Life's last sigh had transpired, as religion performed her ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... put dreams into thy slumbering mind? Who, with bright Fear's lean taper, crossed a hand Athwart its beam, and stooping, truth maligned, Spake so thy spirit speech should understand, And with a dread "He's dead!" awaked a peal Of frenzied bells along the vacant ways Of thy poor earthly heart; waked thee to steal, Like dawn ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... o' the taper Bows toward her; and would under-peep her lids, To see th' enclosed lights, now canopied Under these windows, white and azure, lac'd With blue of heaven's ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... shrubbery; in so black a night it might have been remarked for miles; and I blamed myself bitterly for my incaution. How much more sharply when I reached the place! One of the candlesticks was overthrown, and that taper quenched. The other burned steadily by itself, and made a broad space of light upon the frosted ground. All within that circle seemed, by the force of contrast and the overhanging blackness, brighter than by day. And there was the blood-stain in the midst; and a little farther ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which they were about to make them: though none of the Society were in Malacca, and that the plague was there violently raging, yet the whole nobility, and all the body of the clergy, came with James Pereyra to the shore, to receive the blessed body, each with a waxen taper in his hand, and carried it in ceremony to the church of Our Lady of the Mount, followed by a crowd of Christians, Mahometans, and Idolaters, who on this occasion seemed all to be ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... she, "without thy aid I am lost; for I love deeply. I have no parents, and they say I am sold to the demon. Oh, take pity on me! save me, if it be true: and if it is but the saying of the wicked, let my soul know the truth; and when I offer thee my taper at the altar of Notre Dame, prove to me that my ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... a niche in the wall. They cannot avoid imputing some share of foulness to them that are for scouring the chamber; and the civilized male, keeping his own chamber locked, quite shares their pale taper's view. The full-blooded to the finger-tips, on the other hand, are likely to be drawn to the subject, by noble inducement as often as by base: Nature at flood being the cause in either instance. This young ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... already set off to look for Grinsell's accomplice. Taper in hand he went quickly from room to room; joined by the squire's servants, he searched every nook and cranny of the house, examining doors and windows, opening cupboards, poking at curtains—all in vain. At last, at the end of a dark corridor, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the sunlight's gold; Her hands are featly formed, and taper; Her—well, the rest ought not be told In any modest family paper. Fair as Ischomache, and bright As Brimo. Quaeque queen ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... breathe his last sigh. But on such an occasion decency forbade that positive orders for departure should be passed from mouth to mouth. The heads of the stables, therefore, agreed with the people who were in the King's room, that the latter should place a lighted taper near a window, and that at the instant of the King's decease one of them should ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... trees, Where first our marriage-vows were given, With merry peals shall swell the breeze And point with taper spire ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... "Anything the matter, Nat?" and getting up quickly he struck a match and lit a little wax taper that he always carried in the brass match-box, part ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... I guess, Thirteen summers, or something less; Girlish bust, but womanly air; Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair, Lips that lover has never kissed; Taper fingers and slender wrist; Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; So they painted the little maid. On her hand a parrot green ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... the knee, and in the forearm, we have two groups of "benders" or flexors, and "straighteners" or extensors, as in the upper arm and leg, only slenderer and more numerous. They taper down into cord-like tendons at the wrist and ankle to fasten and to pull the hands and feet "open" and "shut," just as do the strings in the legs and arms of a puppet or mechanical doll, or the sinews in the ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... the night of the 11th of May that the Countess sat at her child's bedside. She had brought up a taper with her, and there she sat watching the sleeping girl. Thoughts wondrously at variance with each other, and feelings thoroughly antagonistic, ran through her brain and heart. This was her only child,—the one thing that there was for her to love,—the only ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... themselves taken by surprise, they could not make him understand that they had not prepared this interruption. Besides, ere they could exchange looks, to the amazement of the assembly, three women, 'en chemise', with naked feet, each with a cord round her neck and a wax taper in her hand, came through the door and advanced to the middle of the platform. It was the Superior of the Ursulines, followed by Sisters Agnes and Claire. Both the latter were weeping; the Superior was very pale, but her bearing was firm, and her eyes were fixed and tearless. She knelt; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... related in what manner I lost my sleep during my youth. I had since that time contracted a habit of reading every night in my bed, until I found my eyes begin to grow heavy. I then extinguished my wax taper, and endeavored to slumber for a few moments, which were in general very short. The book I commonly read at night was the Bible, which, in this manner I read five or six times from the beginning to the end. This evening, finding myself less disposed to sleep ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the other hand his male kinsfolk and neighbours, with not a few of the other citizens, and a due proportion of the clergy according to his quality, assembled without, in front of the house, to receive the corpse; and so the dead man was borne on the shoulders of his peers, with funeral pomp of taper and dirge, to the church selected by him before his death. Which rites, as the pestilence waxed in fury, were either in whole or in great part disused, and gave way to others of a novel order. For not only did no crowd of women surround the bed of the dying, but many passed from this ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... of the axe, wielded by brawny arms, the strong door presently fell with a crash into the room, and stepping over its fragments, the assailants stood in the presence of the occupants. By a taper, which was burning on a small table, the apartment was sufficiently lighted to make all ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... office pay, And smooth my passage to the realms of day; See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll, Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul! Ah no—in sacred vestments may'st thou stand, The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand, Present the Cross before my lifted eye, Teach me at once and learn ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... from the hall to his lodging. Neither he nor Rex spoke during the quarter of an hour they employed in reaching the street door, but Rex's arm was aching with the effort of sustaining and directing his companion. He lit a taper and prepared to help him up the stairs. But the sight of the familiar entrance recalled Greif to himself and dissipated the first stupor of his grief. He ascended the steps firmly, though he went like a man overcome with fatigue, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... sauvages, and went out. The faces of many girls were brilliant with vermilion; others were blacked, their robes, leggings, and skin dresses glittering with beads and quill-work. Rings and bracelets of shining brass encircled their taper arms and fingers, and shells dangled from their ears. Indeed, all the finery collectable was piled on in barbarous profusion, though a few, in good taste through poverty, wore a single band and but few rings, with jetty hair parted in the middle, from the forehead ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... threatened building. Vinicius sprang to the interior. The little atrium was empty, and dark with smoke. Feeling for the door which led to the sleeping-rooms, he saw the gleaming flame of a small lamp, and approaching it saw the lararium in which was a cross instead of lares. Under the cross a taper was burning. Through the head of the young catechumen, the thought passed with lightning speed that that cross sent him the taper with which he could find Lygia; hence he took the taper and searched for the sleeping-rooms. He found one, pushed aside ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... whom he next approached, and supposed to be an attendant on the other, was below the middle size, and her legs were so disproportionably short, that, when she moved, she must have waddled along; her elbows were drawn in to touch her long taper, waist, and the air of her whole body was an affectation of gentility. Death could not alter the rigid hang of her limbs, or efface the simper that had stretched her mouth; the lips were thin, as if nature intended she should mince her words; her nose was small, and sharp at the end; and the forehead, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... upon the pink one, because that matched the color of the paper she had been using; and so she took out a pink taper, and set it in the candlestick. It fitted very snugly, so there was no danger of its ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull
... then comes a young man, and after a reverence to the pagoda he goes wandering round, looking for someone, maybe; and then comes an old man with his son. They stop at the little stalls on the stairs, and they have bought there each a candle. The old man has a plain taper, but the little lad must have one with his emblem on it. Each day has its own sign, a tiger for Monday, and so on, and the lad buys a candle like a little rat, for his birthday is Friday, and the father and son go on to the platform. There ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... he did hate to part with that uniform. Simply couldn't seem to do it all at once, but had to taper off gradual. First off he was only going to sport it two days a week, but whenever he could invent a special occasion, out it came. He even got him a Sam Browne belt, which was contrary to orders, ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... of it; yet it is supported." God supports it. We must know that God is great, that God is good; and trust, where we cannot see.—Returning home from Leipzig once, he is struck by the beauty of the harvest-fields: How it stands, that golden yellow corn, on its fair taper stem, its golden head bent, all rich and waving there,—the meek Earth, at God's kind bidding, has produced it once again; the bread of man!—In the garden at Wittenburg one evening at sunset, a little bird was perched ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... souls, and a few children of God belonging to the state church come. Another brother was also added to our number about a fortnight ago, so that we are now two-and-twenty altogether, who break bread. This is a small company certainly, but though it be only like a taper on a candlestick, yet there is some light, however little, and I trust that, with God's blessing, this light will be more and more bright in Germany, where it is so much needed. The Lord is also blessing my ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... altar. Unless you strain your eyes, or lamps are burning, side chapels pass unnoticed. If you are looking for inscriptions or want to admire the old master's picture, with which every church claims to be endowed, you must get the verger with his taper. Altars are gaudily decorated and statues bejeweled and be (artificial) flowered in Hispano-Italian fashion. The mairie, reconstructed from an ancient palace or castle, was more interesting. Beside the mairie a ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... beg pardon! Have you been long here?" said the most soft and insinuating voice, while the speaker passed his taper fingers across his brow, as if to dissipate the traces of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... giuen, him. The Exorcistes, serued to commaunde euille sprites oute of menne, and in token therof, had a lesse booke giuen them. The Acholite, had the bearyng and the orderyng of the Tapers, Candelstickes, and Cruettes at the Altare: and therfore had a Candelsticke, a Taper, and two emptie Cruorettes deliuered hym. The Subdeacon, mighte take the offring, and handle the Chalice, and the Patine, carie theim to the Altare, and fro the Altare, and giue the Deacon Wine and water, out of the Cruettes. And therfore the Bishoppe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... edible than muffin. She bowed her pretty head in token of her entire perception of my wishes, and, leaving the room with the agility of a fawn, returned in a short time, laden with a tray, from the level surface of which rose a tall coffee-pot that continued to taper till it kissed with its old fashioned lid her jet ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... must go," said Monsignore Catesby to Lothair, and he gently but irresistibly pushed him into his place. "You know you promised to support her. You had better take this," he said, thrusting a lighted taper into his hand; "it is usual, and ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... England, as he stands on some eminence, and looks down on its rich landscape of golden grain and waving cornfield, sees no feature more beautiful than its simple churches, whose white taper fingers point upward, amid the greenness and bloom of the distant prospects, as if to remind one of the overshadowing providence whence all this luxuriant beauty flows; and year by year, as new ones are added to the number, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... part As God and devil; bring them to the mind, They dull its edge with their monotony. To know one element, explore another, And in the second reappears the first. The specious panorama of a year But multiplies the image of a day,— A belt of mirrors round a taper's flame; And universal Nature, through her vast And crowded whole, an infinite ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... implanted in his heart. Then, when the daylight began to wane, and the moon and stars already grew beautiful in their places in the firmament, he would pass into the subterranean vaults of the edifice, trembling as his little taper scarcely dispelled the dull, solemn gloom, and listening with breathless attention for the voices of those guardian spirits whose fabled habitation was made in the apartments of the sacred place. Or, when the multitude had departed for their amusements and ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... when Newton was attending divine service, his dog Diamond upset a lighted taper on his desk and destroyed some papers representing the work of years. Newton is reported merely to have exclaimed: "O Diamond, Diamond, little do you know the mischief you have done me!" But, nevertheless, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... where others sat, and blotting out the prospect of half the church with her flaring brim and flaunting feathers. The worshippers came and went, and while the monk preached and reposed a man crept dizzyingly round the cornice with a taper at the end of a long pole lighting the chandeliers, while two other men on the floor kindled the candles before the altars. As soon as their work was completed, the monk, as if he had been preaching against time, sat definitely down and left us to the rapture of the perfected ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... of them, in his cap and gown, had a taste in the matter! That was the prime of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven, and his broad and equal blaze made the darkest places bright and the dullest eyes clear. We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing but overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are gone! But do you know I fancy—I fancy"—and he grew suddenly almost familiar in this visionary fervour—"I ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... heath, at midnight seen, No more the windows ranged in long array (Where the tall shaft and fretted arch between Thick ivy twines) the taper'd rites betray. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... an improvised concert. Climbing the piano-stool, she went over the notes with her little taper fingers, touching the keys in a light, knowing way, that proved her a musician's child. Then I must play for her, and let the dance begin. This was a wondrous performance on her part, and consisted at first in hopping up and down on one ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... he rushed in under the before-mentioned walls, which were adorned with jagged nails, to make crossing on them unpleasant for the Englebourn boys. Against one of these Tom's line severed, and the waters closed over two beauteous flies, and some six feet of lovely taper gut. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... spoke were a part of the procession esteemed very glorious by the Florentine populace; and being perhaps chiefly a kind of hyperbole for the all-efficacious wax taper, were also called ceri. But inasmuch as hyperbole is impracticable in a real and literal fashion, these gigantic ceri, some of them so large as to be of necessity carried on wheels, were not solid but hollow, and had their surface made not solely of wax, but of wood and pasteboard, gilded, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... remained there seated in its chair during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and the greater part of the sixteenth centuries. And indeed, it might have been there still but that in 1577 some children, curious about it and anxious to see a thing so wonderful, thrust a lighted taper into the tomb through one of the holes in the marble, when mummy, vestments, chair and all were consumed, and in a moment nothing remained but a ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... young forehead on the stone; The dark shade gloomed an instant on her head; And 'twixt her taper fingers pearled and shone The single tear ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... wand'rings round this world of care, In all my griefs—and GOD has given my share— I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, 85 Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down; To husband out life's taper at the close, And keep the flame from wasting by repose. I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, Amidst the swains to show my book-learn'd skill, 90 Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt, and all I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... far from being a well-shaped creature: it appears disproportioned. Its back is long and hollow; and its tail does not taper so gracefully as in some other animals of the cat kind. Its legs are short and stout; and although far from clumsy in appearance, it does not possess the graceful tournure of body so characteristic of some of its congeners. Though considered ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... homologues of the wings extend wholly across the interior of the food bowl, and have the forms of triangles with smaller triangular spurs at their bases. The wings are extended at right angles to the axis of the body, and taper uniformly to the rim of the bowl. The smaller spurs near the union of the wings and body represent the posterior part of the latter, and between them are the tail-feathers, their number being indicated by ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... kindle my taper, And called to the Maid to remind her; And what should she bring me for paper But Gally i.o. the Grinder. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... anchor heave, And close upon my thunder-pulsing breast, O ship, Thou would'st tremble, nor repine, That being mine, Thy spars, Like long pale lights of falling stars, Plunged in the Stygian blackness of the sea, And to billowy ruin cast Thy tall and taper mast, Rushed shrieking headlong down to an abyss. O ship! O love! if Death Were such sure portion, thou could'st not refuse But thou would'st choose As mine to die, and call such choosing bliss; For thou for me Wert plann'd ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... to the taper fly, Bees on flowers will cluster; Keep a loving maid who can From love's golden lustre! Fear you lest that beacon light From your arms should lure me? Well I know without my help You can not secure me. ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... cascades. On older trees still than these, huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs. Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum. The leaf was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was interrupted; the lichen eat the vigor of the stalk, and the ivy slowly strangled to ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... token of his enmity? Typee or Happar? I asked within myself. I started, for at the same moment this identical question was asked by the strange being before me. I turned to Toby, the flickering light of a native taper showed me his countenance pale with trepidation at this fatal question. I paused for a second, and I know not by what impulse it was that I answered 'Typee'. The piece of dusky statuary nodded in approval, and then murmured ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... gentlemen who have nothing to do but think for slaves, to enjoy the chase and the race-ground, to extol their pedigree, and traduce labor, and lead retainers to war—would be a government for the few over the many, an aristocracy of blood and privilege, of curled moustache and taper fingers; but not a republic of patriots, of self-made men, of equal privilege and just laws. It would be a return to semi-barbarism, to the age of Louis XIV., or even of ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... would Have cradled as the Baby of her Eye. In Rose and Musk she wash'd him—to his Lips Press'd the pure Sugar from the Honeycomb; And when, Day over, she withdrew her Milk, She made, and having laid him in, his Bed, Burn'd all Night like a Taper o'er his Head. ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... utter a sigh of relief, but he did not even wince, only stood motionless as his tyrant took the wax taper, held it to his cigar till it burned well, and then extinguished it by placing the little wick against the black man's bare arm, before pitching the wax to the man, who caught it ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... her composition a strong vein of the superstitious, and was pleased, among other fancies, to read alone in her chamber by a taper fixed in a candlestick which she had formed out of a human skull. One night, this strange piece of furniture acquired suddenly the power of locomotion, and, after performing some odd circles on her chimneypiece, fairly leaped on the floor, and continued to roll about the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... flickering taper's ray To light departing feet, my shadowed way You brighten with your faith. Faith makes the man Alas, that my poor foolish age outran Its early trust in God! The death of art And progress follows, when the world's hard heart Casts out religion. 'Tis ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Henry held the taper. Looking into the cavity, by the dim and flickering light, they both detected a dark object at the bottom of it. 'I think I can reach the thing,' the manager remarked, 'if I lie down, and put my ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... follow, and taking a lighted taper, led the way into a room at the back of his shop. Ombos pottered about with the taper on the end of a rod; suddenly a big overhead chandelier burst into light and I stood blinking ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... turkey-hunting! I meant to have gone down to the farm-house after tea, and inquired about the safety of my prizes, but Kate wanted to play chess. Peter couldn't, and Peggy wouldn't; I had to, of course, and we played late. Kate had such pretty hands; long taper fingers, rounded to the tiniest rosy points; no dimples, but full muscles, firm and exquisitely moulded; and the dainty way in which she handled her men was half the game to me;—I lost it; I played wretchedly. The next day Kate went with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... and precocious piety, proved the exact counterpart of her brother. Soon after her confinement, Francesca had a vision which impressed her with the belief that God would one day claim this child as His own. She saw a dove of dazzling whiteness, bearing in its beak a tiny lighted taper, enter the room; and after making two or three circles in the air, it stooped over Agnese's cradle, touched her brow and limbs with the taper, gently fluttered its wings, and flew away. Looking upon this as ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... held sacred by the Hindus, and was abundantly used in all their religions ceremonies. Its leaves are very long, and taper to a sharp needle-like point, of which the extreme acuteness was proverbial; whence the epithet applied to a clever man, 'sharp as the point of Ku[s']a-grass.' Its botanical name ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... glimmering taper's light, Illumes and cheers our way; And still, as darker grows the night, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... into the vast church which the crusaders had built to enclose all the sacred ground, and little lights broke the darkness here and there, without dispelling it, but the poor Christian who led Gilbert had a taper in his hand. The knight came first to the deep-red stone whereon Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea anointed the body of the Lord for burial, and there kneeling down, he set his shield and sword before him and prayed that he might yet use them well. Then the man took him ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... great heaps round a kind of pyramid some sixty feet in height. Old King Carnival, in effigy, was placed at the apex of the pyramid, and the interior was filled with comestibles that would set the whole erection in a blaze as soon as a taper was applied. When the signal was given, bells pealed and trumpets sounded glad farewell to the customs of the ancient carnival. The procession set forth from San Marco on Palm Sunday (led by white-robed children with garlands on their heads), and ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... hand at a glance. He would have recognised it, in that forest solitude, by its symmetry and whiteness, its delicacy and its fullness; but one of the taper fingers wore a ring that, of late, Maud had much used; being a diamond hoop that she had learned was a favourite ornament of her real mother's. It is not surprising, therefore, that he seized the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... Oh! And look! [She paints to a rounded metal object lying in the bin, close to where the taper was] It's a bomb! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the dark, triumph when the bringing in of a candle discovers the vanity of their fears. For this exposure of supernatural agents upon a stage is truly bringing in a candle to expose their own delusiveness. It is the solitary taper and the book that generates a faith in these terrors: a ghost by chandelier light, and in good company, deceives no spectators,—a ghost that can be measured by the eye, and his human dimensions made out at leisure. The sight ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... awhile. It so chanced one day that he locked his shop and went home, and in the night there came to the bazar an artful thief disguised in the habit of the merchant, and pulling out keys from his sleeve, said to the watchman of the market, "Light me this wax-candle." The watchman took the taper and went to light it,—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... face of the earth, white as the face of the dead. He ran full speed along the river bank as one pursued by the tide, though, even then, his footfall was not so rapid as the beating of his heart. The distant lights through the fog seemed to him like a procession of taper-bearers at a funeral; he did not know how this idea arose, but it terrified him, for behind it again he saw death. Then he came upon silent figures hastening ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... that the colleges are numerous, well endowed, and provided with ample means for turning out mediocre priests. The monasteries devote themselves to the education of little monks. They are taught from an early age to hold a wax taper, wear a frock, cast down their eyes, and chant in Latin. If you wish to admire the foresight of the Church, you should see the procession of Corpus Christi day. All the convents walk in line one ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... pharmaceuticals, and special-purpose machines, will therefore be more reliant on export markets at the same time they are being squeezed by the strong franc. Consequently, growth in machinery and equipment investment, for example, is expected to taper off. On the other side, import growth in 1997 also is likely to be lower than the 1995 rate of 6.6%, but higher ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... eyes whose living lustre shed the heat Of bright meridian day; the heavenly mould Of that angelic form; the hands, the feet, The taper arms, the crisped locks of gold; Charms that the sweets of paradise enfold; The radiant lightning of her angel-smile, And every grace that could the sense beguile Are now a pile of ashes, deadly cold! And yet I bear to drag ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... the mean time, lay in a kind of trance; and her father, when the prayers were over, ran down stairs for some wine, a cordial being necessary to recover her: the Friar, at the same time, ordered him to light and bring with him a consecrated taper; for hitherto they had no light but that of the vision, which was still strong enough to discover every thing in ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... of the organ attracted the attention of Monte-Leone and increased his excitement. He crossed the church, went down the nave, and approached a lateral chapel where a taper was burning with a flickering light. The Count entered the chapel. Those who had seen him amid the brilliant society of Naples, or amid the awful judicial ordeal to which he had just been subjected, and which ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... these two barrels is emptied—I've often thought of doin' some sich matter; and, ag'in and ag'in, has Dolly and Blossom advised me to fall into the plan; but it's hard to give up old habits, all at once. If I could only taper off on a pint a day, for a year or so, I think I might come round in time. I know as well as you do, Bourdon, that sobriety is a good thing, and dissipation a bad thing; but it's hard to give up ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... of tears succeeded to this transport; and the image of the beauteous Matilda rushing in spite of him on his thoughts, he lay on the ground in a conflict of penitence and passion. Ere he could recover from this agony of his spirits, the Princess Hippolita with a taper in her hand entered the oratory alone. Seeing a man without motion on the floor, she gave a shriek, concluding him dead. Her fright brought Frederic to himself. Rising suddenly, his face bedewed with tears, he would have rushed from her presence; but Hippolita stopping him, conjured ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... stood in Brower's pasture, just clear of the woods. When the sun rose, one could see its taper shadow stretching away to the foot of Woody Ledge, and at sunset it lay like a fallen mast athwart the cow-paths, its long top arm a flying pennant on the side of Bowman's Hill. In summer this bar of shadow moved ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... yet, in the absence of more authentic testimony, afford a pretty accurate glimpse at the real nature of those events, however they may have been disguised by fiction and misstatement. Where tradition is our only guide we must follow implicitly, satisfied that her taper was lighted at the torch of Truth, though it may gleam doubtfully and partially through the mists and errors of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... No! 'twas a vision! his hour was not yet, And waking, he turn'd on his pallet of straw, And a form by his side he could never forget, By the pale misty light of a taper he saw. "'Tis I! 'tis thy Winifred!"—softly she said, "Arouse thee, and follow—be bold, never fear! There was danger abroad, but my errand has sped, I promised to save thee—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... As her taper fingers hovered, Like a tender benediction, in a little bit of fish, Further to impair digestion, she brought up the Eastern Question. By that time I fully echoed that other ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... time to time I tended the saw, and thus I began a training in mechanics which has been useful to me in my profession as a patent lawyer. Heywood also invented a wheel for bringing staves to a bevel and taper, for the construction of barrels systematically. Mr. Heywood remained in town eight or ten years, when he moved to Claremont, N. H., where he died at the age of eighty years or more. He was thoroughly upright, but he had ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... responsible for the confidence granted to her thus upon credit, and a strong ambition was excited in her mind to justify the high opinion her superior friend had formed of her. She determined to become all that she was believed to be; as the flame of a taper suddenly rises towards what is held over it, her spirit mounted to the point ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... means seek the elevation of a class of beings whose degradation has distracted the political wisdom of our happy country, from its conquest to the present day. "There's something in it," again mutters Mr. Scranton, as he enters his room, lights his taper, and with his elbow resting on the table, his head supported in his hand, sits ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... "The taper flames and hearthfire shine Grew smoke-hazed to a lurid light, And songs on subjects not divine Were warbled ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... growths. It was the hub of an oblong wheel, and from it, at regular distances, like spokes, ran the outgoing canyons. Here a dull red color predominated over the fading yellow. The corners of wall bluntly rose, scarred and scrawled, to taper into towers and serrated peaks ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... greater than those of the substances which cast them, but light is a spherical congeries of pyramids, whose very apexes are the sun itself, and hence the system shines with uninterrupted light. But if the light we use is but a paltry and narrow taper, most objects will cast a shadow wider ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... fully dressed, in an easy chair, with a slip of paper, which looked like a map, upon his knee, and his forehead sunk forward upon his hand in deep thought. I stood, dumb with astonishment, watching him from the darkness. A small taper on the edge of the table shed a feeble light, which sufficed to show me that he was fully dressed. Suddenly, as I looked, he rose from his chair, and walking over to a bureau at the side he unlocked it and drew out one of the drawers. From this he took ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... it a bad practice to give him any hard, unyielding substance, as it tends to harden the gums, and, by so doing, causes the teeth to come through with greater difficulty. I have found softer substances, such as either a piece of wax taper, or an India-rubber ring, or a piece of the best bridle leather, or a crust of bread, of great service. If a piece of crust be given as a gum-stick, he must, while biting it, be well watched, or by accident he might loosen ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! Fresh lily, And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch— But kiss, one kiss—'Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' th' taper Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids To see th' enclosed lights now canopied Under the windows, white and azure, laced With blue of Heav'ns own tinct—on her left breast A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I' ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... his fingers. He lifted it to his lips and kissed it reverently. Then he laid it down before the gilded gateway of the sanctuary, with the thought in his mind that perhaps her foot might touch it as she passed and make it sacred. Then he lit a taper at a lamp, and in obedience to the order given him by Father Hieronymus the previous night, he carried the tiny flame to each of the candles on the altar, till all were lighted. This task done, he prostrated himself on the steps before the ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and resigned myself entirely to the will of God; he gave, and he can take away. Picture to yourself the state of alarm, care, and anxiety in which I have been kept for the last fortnight. She died without being conscious of any thing—her life went out like a taper. Three days ago she confessed, received the sacrament and extreme unction; but since that time she has been constantly delirious and rambling, until this afternoon at twenty-one minutes after five, when she was seized with convulsions, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... You have had a most fatiguing day. Permit me!" said Mr. Force, and he lighted a wax taper and put it ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... together, and raising her eyes to Heaven, she said: "I am the Immaculate Conception." On two other occasions, at somewhat long intervals, April 7 and July 16, she again appeared: the first time to perform the miracle of the lighted taper, that taper above which the child, plunged in ecstasy, for a long time unconsciously left her hand, without burning it; and the second time to bid Bernadette farewell, to favour her with a last smile, and a last inclination of the head full of charming politeness. This made ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Meanwhile Sabine, taper in hand, entered her brother's room. "Good-night, Traugott," nodded she. "Wohlfart has been with you this evening; how ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... breath, and ought to be understood by every one. Assuming the ground upon which a building is to be built to be of uniform density, the width of the foundation should be in proportion to the load, the foundation should taper equally on each side, and the center of the foundation should be under the center of pressure. In other words, it is as fatal to success to have too much foundation under the light load as it is too little ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... in long tresses on her shoulders, not less transparently white. She wears a gown of rich silk, opening in front to display a chemisette of the most delicate cambric, which is scarcely less delicate than her skin. Her slender arms are without bracelets, and her taper fingers without rings. As she stands behind the queen, holding her majesty's fan and gloves, she is obliged, from her deafness, to lean her fair face with its sunny hair first to the right side, then to the left, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... a distinct and important significance in marking off nuances of political parties, it appears that it does not follow as an inevitable sequence that because a man sits behind the Ministerial bench he is therefore a Taper or a Tadpole, or that because he takes up his quarters below the gangway he is a John Hampden. The distinction is more strongly marked on the Liberal side; but even there there are some honest men who usually obey the crack of the Whip. On the Conservative side the gangway ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... Gaston eagerly, so soon as the door had closed behind the three, and Raymond had coaxed the dim taper into its feeble flicker — "Father, we have come to thee for counsel — for help. Father, chide us not, nor call us ingrate; but it has come to this with us — we can no longer brook this tame and idle life. We are not of the peasant stock; why ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... t'other, accordin' to the humour she was in, for she was a'most a grand bit of stuff was Happy, she'd put an edge on a knife a'most. She was a rael steel. Her figur' was as light as a fairy's, and her waist was so taper and tiny, it seemed jist made for puttin' an arm round in walkin'. She was as active and springy on her feet as a catamount, and near about as touch me-not a sort of customer too. She actilly did seem as if she was made out of steel springs and chicken-hawk. If old Cran, was to slip ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... curve and taper spars of the vessel, and began to wonder at the way in which she seemed to grow as they drew nearer; or was it that the boat in which he was ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... less a youth of either sex, to read "A Strange Manuscript" without feeling that wonderful charm that stole over us all when children upon the perusal of our favorite adventures. The cathedral clock may chime the fast-speeding hours, and the midnight taper burn to its socket, but this rare volume will remain before the eager eyes until the ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... funeral service was performed I carried the taper (nota bene) and some pieces of gold to the Bishop who performed the grand mass, and who was sitting in an arm-chair near the altar. The prelate intended to have given them to his assistants, the priests of the King's ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the tawny vapour That the City lanes have uprolled, Behind whose webby fold on fold Like a waning taper ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with some one; and my last flame happening to be blown out by a whiff of jealousy on the sudden turn of a corner, I had lighted it up afresh at the pure taper of Eliza but about three months before,—swearing, as I did it, that it should last me through the whole journey.—Why should I dissemble the matter? I had sworn to her eternal fidelity;—she had a right to my whole ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... his taper, when Aramis, who had watched through his curtains the last glimmer of light in his friend's apartment, traversed the corridor on tiptoe, and went to Porthos's room. The giant, who had been in bed nearly ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her card of matches, and breaking off one of them, soon had a tiny taper which lit up their ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... were heaps of luxuries—dining-rooms, dressing-rooms, libraries, bedrooms, drawing-rooms, oratories, all crowded into the space of a hearthrug. The first night, I remember, with my books and maps about me, I wanted light; they brought me a taper, and immediately from out of the silent Desert there rushed in a flood of life unseen before. Monsters of moths, of all shapes and hues, that never before perhaps had looked upon the shining of a flame, now madly thronged into my tent, and dashed ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... young heifers of North Devon, with their taper legs, the exact symmetry of their form, and their clear coats of dark red, are pictures of elegance.' Their superiority for grazing and draught was proved by the high prices demanded for them, but they were not equally esteemed as dairy animals,[749] though of late years ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... magazines. He had written a good deal of graceful verse, and one or two pretty idyllic stories, and there were people who looked very hopefully on him as a rising light of literature. His sudden accession to wealth had almost buried the poor taper of his genius when the hands of Love triumphant took it suddenly at the time of that lazy lounge beneath the awning, and gave it a chance once more. He was meditating, as lovers will, upon his own unworthiness ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... silhouette, bending against the wind. Still the waxen Virgin smiled her Mexican smile,—but now she was only seven inches high; and her bead-glass eyes seemed to twinkle with kindliness while the flame of the last expiring taper struggled for life in the earthen socket at ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... by train, and I let him in gently myself. I had been so much absorbed in the coming experiment that I passed the ruins in going to meet him, almost without thought, if you can understand that. I had my lantern; and he showed me a coil of taper which he had ready for use. "There is nothing like light," he said, in his scoffing tone. It was a very still night, scarcely a sound, but not so dark. We could keep the path without difficulty as we went along. As we approached the spot we could ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... observed in his official intercourse with men. It was written by his own hand, a secretary copying as he wrote. When finished, the original was put into an envelope, which the secretary was about to seal with a wafer; but this Nelson would not permit, directing that taper and wax should be brought. The man sent was killed before he could return. When this was reported to the admiral, his only reply was, "Send another messenger;" and he waited until the wax came, and then saw that particular care was exercised to make a full and perfect ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the red color comes! The Sultan himself hath chosen this beauty for Her Majesty—she who perchance will never mount him, scorning to do aught that would make the blood flow warmer through the veins;—going daily to San Nicolo with her taper and knowing naught of pleasure in life; unless it verily pleaseth her to grieve! What availeth it to her that she ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... calendar for months and years. There are some counsel who pocket fees and costs to the tune of twenty thousand a year. We know many a Quirk, Gammon and Snap, who realize an undoubted "ten thousand a year," with no Tittlebat Titmouse for a standing annoyance. And we can taper off on the finger many who do not realize five hundred a year, and work like negro slaves at that: they are continually rough hewing, but ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... very imposing effect. The King's chaplain, Benedict Bishop of Bangor, in his pontifical dress, carried the consecrated Host to the walls of the town, preceded by thirty-two chaplains, each in full canonicals, and attended by as many esquires, one of whom bore a lighted taper before each priest. As soon as the parties were sworn on the elements, the townsmen were assured that they need fear no acts of wrong or violence, for the King wished rather to preserve than to destroy his ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... mighty power, Charmer of an idle hour, Object of my warm desire Lip of wax, and eye of fire, And thy snowy taper waist With my finger gently braced, And thy pretty smiling crest With my little stopper pressed, And the sweetest bliss of blisses Breathing from thy balmy kisses, Happy thrice and thrice again Happiest he of happy men, Who, when again the night returns, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... how much he had written: he had written, and of his own accord—as Carolyn made a point of from the first. There is an algebraic formula expressive of the truth that "1" is an infinitely greater number of times than "0." And a single small taper is infinitely greater in point of light and cheer than none at all. Carolyn's little world underwent illumination, and she with it. She promptly soared to ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... With carbonic acid the results were still more striking. A mixture of three volumes of that gas with one of hydrogen caused ignition of the platina, yet that mixture would not continue to burn from the jet when attempts were made to light it by a taper. A mixture even of seven volumes of carbonic acid and one of hydrogen will thus cause the ignition of cold spongy platina, and yet, as if to supply a contrast, than which none can be greater, it cannot burn at a taper, but causes the extinction ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... earl sat and watched the young man (for he could not be thirty yet), struck down thus in the prime of his days—carried away into the other world—while he himself, with his frail, flickering taper of a life, remained. Wherefore? At length, in a whisper, he called "Helen!" and she came and knelt ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... throw an interesting side-light, also, upon another oft-observed phenomenon in psychical research. I refer to the fact that apparitions ("ghosts") are nearly always seen to be clear and distinct as to the head and upper portions of the body, while they taper off to vapour and "filmy nothingness" in the lower limbs, so that often the feet are not visible at all. While this may be due in part to the fact that the observer's attention is not directed ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... the third century, now wreathed and garlanded with luxuriant ivy. Beside these ruins I descended into the Catacombs by an ancient staircase, at the foot of which my guide provided me with a long twisted wax taper, calculated to last out my visit. A short distance from the entrance, I came to a vestibule surrounded with loculi or rock-hewn graves. The walls were plastered, and covered with rude inscriptions, scratched with a pointed iron instrument. These were done by pilgrims and devotees in later ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... it was finished, I folded it up, and lighted a taper to seal it. Old Mrs Culpepper, who was in the room, croaked out, "No, no; you must show it to Medea." But I paid no attention to her, and having sealed my letter, put on my hat, and walked out to the post-office. I dropped it into the box, and, on returning, found Mr Culpepper ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... facing audience, a long seat with a high back and pew- like ends. At the rise of the curtain, Thomas Rigby, the rubicund landlord, is lighting with a taper the candles that stand on the mantelshelf, the buttons on his plum-colored waistcoat twinkling in the gleam. He has only lighted one when the door is pushed open, and there enter two young British lieutenants, mere lads, whose scarlet cloaks, exaggerated lace wrist ruffles, and brilliant gold ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... increased thickness of the bone which is growing inward and has not the digital impressions of the convolutions which are marked wherever the brain is in an active growing condition. The criminal's skull must be studied by post mortem examination, and the most effective method is by placing a taper through the foramen magnum at the bottom of the skull which will reveal the more active organs by the translucency and thinness of the bones, while the inactive organs are indicated by their opacity and thickness, as in the following ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... with her small taper finger on her lip, "it's the fairies I'm after—the 'good people,' nurse Bridget has told me so much about. I am sure there must be some of them in this still, shady place. I've found their 'rings' in the ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... weeds of Peace high triumphs hold, 120 With store of Ladies, whose bright eies Rain influence, and judge the prise Of Wit, or Arms, while both contend To win her Grace, whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear In Saffron robe, with Taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique Pageantry, Such sights as youthfull Poets dream On Summer eeves by haunted stream. 130 Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonsons learned Sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespear ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... briefly ruled the house and chilled the air in it. Her son's overthrow had struck at the heart of her vitality and presaged her own swift doom. All lesser interests had dwindled and grown poor; her life seemed flickering out like a taper in the breeze. Now grief had something to leaven it. Something had set up a screen between her and the wind of unmerciful events. There was a possibility, not of reprieve, but of a message from the unseen good, and for a moment the candle of her life burned steadily. Since the dead could not return, ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... of the old man. With the distinctly pleasurable sensation of being still alive he found himself standing upright upon an uneven floor of masonry. He thrust out his arms and touched sides of mossy rock. Then just before him a pale flame flickered. The old man had kindled a little taper that hardly did more than make shallow hollows in the darkness ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... fumbling and imprecations loud and deep, Kendal succeeded in striking a match and finding the overturned bit of wax taper, which he hastily lighted, peering cautiously into the inky ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... salon—the same great dusky fresco in the concave ceiling. The daughter is not rich, I suppose, any more than the mother. The furniture is worn and faded, and I was admitted by a solitary servant, who carried a twinkling taper before me up the ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... an excellent describer of the world, has made mention of it in the second book of his work, saying: "There is a great island situated in the surge of the northern Ocean, Scandza by name, in the shape of a juniper leaf with bulging sides that taper down to a point at a long end." Pomponius Mela also makes mention of it as situated in the Codan Gulf of the sea, with Ocean ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... to impart All the secrets of her heart; Various is my bulk and hue, Big like Bess, and small like Sue: Now brown and burnish'd like a nut, At other times a very slut; Often fair, and soft, and tender, Taper, tall, and smooth, and slender: Like Flora, deck'd with various flowers, Like Phoebus, guardian of the hours: But whatever be my dress, Greater be my size or less, Swelling be my shape or small, Like thyself I shine in all. Clouded ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... through the vessel until the atmospheric air is replaced by hydrogen. This is determined by collecting some of the gas which bubbles through the water in the basin in a test-tube and testing it by means of a lighted taper. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... could think of to persuade her daughter to alter her decision, and, when this failed, to extract the answer to the momentous conundrum, which Edna knew her mother too well to confide to her, so that at length she was obliged to take up her bedroom taper and retreat, with a Parthian prediction that such folly would be ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... interposed El Carnicerin with calm deliberation. "Who gave you a taper to bear at ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... and rocks, and streams, and strange, new races of men;—these are incidents in which the authentic history of the discovery of our Continent excels the specious wonders of romance, as much as gold excels tinsel, or the sun in the heavens outshines the flickering taper. E. Everett. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... works construction, it is desirable to proceed only at a moderate rate, since demand for private construction will be abnormally high for some time. Our public works program should be timed to reach its peak after demand for private construction has begun to taper off. Meanwhile, however, plans should be prepared if we are to act promptly when the present extraordinary private demand begins to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... latter rather affected to despise his literary reputation; and in this, perhaps, the great Congreve was not far wrong. A touch of Steele's tenderness is worth all his finery; a flash of Swift's lightning, a beam of Addison's pure sunshine, and his tawdry playhouse taper is invisible. But the ladies loved him, and he was ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... light of a wax taper flickering over it; the strange, solemn beauty of that serene brow and ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... near the quarantine station. Neither the porters nor servants of this establishment were there to help us, and we were obliged to carry our own baggage to the building, where we were shown into empty rooms. We could not even get a light. I had fortunately a wax taper with me, which I cut into several pieces and gave to ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... three times as large and coarse as those of the boy who had carried the thrush before, but they seemed to him three times more light and tender—they were handy and kind, and this goes farther than taper fingers. ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Bordereau's room was open and I could see beyond it the faintness of a taper. There was no sound—my footstep caused no one to stir. I came further into the room; I lingered there with my lamp in my hand. I wanted to give Miss Tita a chance to come to me if she were with her aunt, as she must be. I made no noise to call her; I only waited to see if she would not notice ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... the table; the shutters were still closed, although day peeped in the divisions; and the great room was lighted only with a single taper and the shining of the fire. Close in the chimney sat two men. The one that was wrapped in a cloak and wore boots, I knew at once: it was the bird of ill omen back again. Of the other, who was set close to the red embers, and made up into ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Then I looked down and saw something which made me feel that we were far from the world in a sense and to a degree that I cannot easily describe. I saw that the almost straight lines of the tall elm trees diminished a little in perspective as they fell. I was used to seeing parallel lines taper towards the sky. But to see them taper towards the earth made me feel lost in space, ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... or both lines assume a curvilinear shape. For a notable example, the vertical section of the Duke of York's column in Waterloo Place, from all points of view, appears to bulge at the point of sight, and to taper upwards by a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... one entered, the sanctuary light shone as a star out of a night of darkness; in a near-by chapel, a candle sputtered itself away, and a woman—whether old or young one could not see—lighted a fresh taper. Sometimes a man knelt and told his beads, sometimes two women entered and separated for their differing needs and prayers. Sometimes one sat in meditation, or knelt, unmoving, for a space of time; once a child brought a new candle to Saint Antony; always some one came or some one went, ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... formalities have been performed. The religious ceremony takes place in a temple: the pair, after listening to a lengthy harangue from one of the attendant priests, approach the altar, where large tapers are presented to them; the bride, instructed by the priest, lights her taper at the sacred censer on the altar, and the bridegroom, igniting his from hers, allows the two flames to combine, and burn steadily together, thus symbolizing the perfect unity of the marriage state; and this completes ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... having placed upon his desk a taper in a glass globe, looked at the clock. "Half-past nine," said he. "Mahal ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... said, And from his wallet drew a human hand, Shrivelled and dry and black. And fitting, as he spake, A taper in his hold, Pursued: "A murderer on the stake had died. I drove the vulture from his limbs and lopt The hand that did the murder, and drew up The tendon strings to close its grasp, And in the sun and wind Parched it, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... the barber's; and, taking out the false key, (which, though made of baser metal, was almost as bright as the original), put it carefully into his waistcoat pocket. He then stopped at an oil and candle shop, and bought a wax taper and a box of matches. "The garden door's safest: I'll chance it with the garden-door," thought Mat, as he sat down in the shaving-shop chair, and ordered the barber to operate ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Shall I open a flask? No? Well, then, I trust that you have no objection to tobacco-smoke, to the mild balsamic odor of the Eastern tobacco. I am a little nervous, and I find my hookah an invaluable sedative." He applied a taper to the great bowl, and the smoke bubbled merrily through the rose-water. We sat all three in a semicircle, with our heads advanced, and our chins upon our hands, while the strange, jerky little fellow, with his high, shining head, puffed uneasily in ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of fire that was prevalent there; and janet's replying that she had been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I wore; and when I was left there, with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five minutes, I heard them lock my door on the outside. Turning these things over in my mind I deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know nothing of me, might suspect I had a habit of ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... a bad practice to give him any hard, unyielding substance, as it tends to harden the gums, and, by so doing, causes the teeth to come through with greater difficulty. I have found softer substances, such as either a piece of wax taper, or an India-rubber ring, or a piece of the best bridle leather, or a crust of bread, of great service. If a piece of crust be given as a gum-stick, he must, while biting it, be well watched, or by accident he might loosen a large piece of it, which might choke him. ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... darksome passage all alone, The taper's flame, by envious current blown, Crouched low, and eddied round, as in affright, So challenged by the vast and hostile night, Then down I held the taper; — swift and fain Up climbed the ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... duke of treason, and he specially charged that his wife had attempted to destroy the life of the king by witchcraft. The duchess was condemned on this charge, and it is said that, by way of penance, she was sentenced to walk barefoot through the most public street in London with a lighted taper in her hand. Some other persons, who were accused of being accomplices in this crime, were put ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... grace like a woman—no lovely sloped shoulders, no beautiful bosom, no sweeping curve of robe down to the feet. No softness of cheek, or silky hair, or complexion, or taper fingers, or arched eyebrows; no sort of style whatever. They were mere wooden figures; and, in ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... mind the day of her first communion, and how pretty she had been at vespers, with her white veil and her large wax-taper, whilst the girls were all taking their places in a row around the choir, and the bell ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... of the third century, now wreathed and garlanded with luxuriant ivy. Beside these ruins I descended into the Catacombs by an ancient staircase, at the foot of which my guide provided me with a long twisted wax taper, calculated to last out my visit. A short distance from the entrance, I came to a vestibule surrounded with loculi or rock-hewn graves. The walls were plastered, and covered with rude inscriptions, scratched with a pointed ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... solemnity; for it was impossible to keep an act of so extraordinary a nature very private. When the Virgin was brought into the new church, she was placed on a tabernacle by four of the most ancient monks; the King held also a large lighted taper, on which his banner and arms were emblazoned, and being followed by the nobles and cavaliers of his court, joined in the procession; and having placed themselves in proper order in the great cloyster of the church, the monks ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... place it upon the finger of the lady, he desired him to observe that it was a symbol of marriage.—During the whole of the service two other acolytes were stationed in front of the bride and bridegroom, each holding in his hands a lighted taper; and near the conclusion, while they knelt before the altar, a pall of flowered brocade was stretched behind them, as emblematic of their union. Holy water was not forgotten; for, in almost every rite of the ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... took the copper taper stands, one in either hand, and held them aloft. But first he placed his long dagger, not back in his belt, but between his teeth with the handle towards his right hand. Even then in some strange ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... harvest. A spike which has no beard is called polled (muticus), for, when the spike is first forming, the beard, like the horns of a young animal, is not apparent but lies hid like a sword in its scabbard under a wrapping of foliage which hence is called the sheath. When the spike is mature its taper end above the grain is called the frit, while that below, where the spike joins the straw culm, ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... flavour which is peculiar to all British spirits. Or the liquor may be deprived of its alcohol, by heating a portion in a spoon over a candle, till the vapour ceases to catch fire on the approach of a lighted taper. The residue thus obtained, of genuine French brandy, possesses a vinous odour, still resembling the original flavour of the brandy, whilst the residue, produced from sophisticated brandy, has a peculiarly disagreeable smell, resembling gin, or the ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... and design of a dignity almost Dantesque. Facing the visitor, as he enters the sepulchral chamber, this small sarcophagus—small in dimensions, but in impressiveness how great!—rivets him at once under the taper's fitful light. Raised on a rude basement, the body of the monument figures the entrance to a vault; in the centre, painted in colours that have nearly faded, appears a doorway, within the threshold of which four female figures gaze wistfully ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... life of St. Severinus. The reader finds how the man who had secretly celebrated a heathen sacrifice was discovered by St. Severinus, because, while the tapers of the rest of the congregation were lighted miraculously from heaven, his taper alone would not light; and passes on impatiently, with regret that the biographer omits to mention what the heathen sacrifice was like. He reads how the Danube dared not rise above the mark of the cross ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... etc., at present, until we see how the other alterations answer." In another he says: "I have done a Cicero without any plaits—the different segments meeting exactly. The fitting the drills into the spindle by a taper of 1 in 6 will do. They are perfectly stiff and will not unscrew easily. Four guide-pullies answer, but there must be a pair for the other end, and to work with a single hand, for the returning part is always cut upon some part or ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... Clarinda, that simply staggers the reader with the shameless and heartless way in which it speaks of Jean Armour. 'I am dissatisfied with her—I cannot endure her! I, while my heart smote me for the profanity, tried to compare her with my Clarinda. 'Twas setting the expiring glimmer of a farthing taper beside the cloudless glory of the meridian sun. Here was tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary fawning; there, polished good sense, heaven-born genius, and the most generous, the most delicate, the most tender passion. I have ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... long-extended realms and rueful wastes; Where nought but silence reigns, and night, dark night, Dark as was Chaos ere the Infant Sun Was rolled together, or had tried its beams Athwart the gloom profound! The sickly Taper By glimmering through thy low-browed misty vaults, Furred round with mouldy damps, and ropy slime, Lets fall a supernumerary horror, And only serves to make Thy night ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... forward as they are. Mrs. Jawleyford threw aside her silk apron, and took a hasty glance of her face in the old eagle-topped mirror in the still-room; the young ladies discarded their coarse dirty pocket-handkerchiefs, and gently drew elaborately fringed ones through their taper fingers to give them an air of use, as they took a hasty review of themselves in the swing mirrors; the housemaid hurried off with a whole armful of brown holland; and Jawleyford threw himself into attitude in an elaborately carved, richly ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... that letter found on me, your Highness would thereafter be too surely guarded to make escape possible, and his Highness Prince Sobieski would himself incur the Emperor's hostility. So when I had made sure that those five men were joined against me, I twisted that letter into a taper and before their faces lit my ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... all gone off," cried the boy, drawing a deep long breath, as he eagerly looked round the deck and up at the rigging of the smart schooner, whose raking taper masts and white canvas gave her quite the look ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late—and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bed-ward) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures—and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome—and when you presented it to me—and when we were exploring the perfectness ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... width between us! Besides—we are both past our youth! And, according to certain highly instructed scientists and philosophers, the senses and affections grow numb with age. I do not believe this theory myself—for the jejune love of youth is as a taper's flame to the great and passionate tenderness of maturity, when the soul, and not the body, claims its due; when love is not dragged down to the vulgar level of mere cohabitation, after the fashion of the animals in a farmyard, but rises to the best height ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the purest Eros reigns with a too despotic power, and mild affection is apt to sneak away into some corner of the temple on whose shrine Love has descended. This mild affection is but a little twinkling taper, that will burn steadily on, perhaps unseen amidst the dazzling glory of Love's supernal lamp, to be found shining benignantly when the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the same Thought, which presents it self in a great Writer, from what he is when he finds it delivered by a Person of an ordinary Genius. For there is as much Difference in apprehending a Thought cloathed in Cicero's Language, and that of a common Author, as in seeing an Object by the Light of a Taper, or by ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... sermon, "what can we conceive of God's providential love? It is a thought beyond conception, it is a light transcending vision. There is no object on earth or in heaven, that can well represent the truth of its wisdom, the touch of its tenderness, or the attraction of its power. The sun is but a taper, reflecting its glory; the sea is but a globule, describing its breadth and depth. It runs the circle of the universe, without interruption, and without end. It is particular as it is impartial; it is melting and sweet, as it is mighty and sublime; and it holds you and me, and it holds ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... to it by the early settlers. The muzzle is rather elongated, the ears short and erect, and the pupils elliptical, corresponding with its leaping, predaceous habits; if it had the characteristic brush instead of a long taper tail, its figure would bear a considerable resemblance to that of the fox. The female is much smaller, but more active and supple in its movements than the male. They prey upon kangaroos, opossums, bandicoots, and other native animals; hunting ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... being a well-shaped creature: it appears disproportioned. Its back is long and hollow; and its tail does not taper so gracefully as in some other animals of the cat kind. Its legs are short and stout; and although far from clumsy in appearance, it does not possess the graceful tournure of body so characteristic of some of its ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... Sir Godfrey; at which the Chaplain smiled reproachfully, and shook a long transparent taper finger at his patron in a very playful manner, ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... rod terminating in a point be attached to the conductor of an electrical machine, electricity escapes in large quantities from the point. A continuous current is thus kept up and the flame of a taper, if placed in front of the current, is blown in a horizontal direction. Wind is thus manufactured on a small ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... Brown, coolly, taking his wife's hand and showing her wedding-ring; 'and what just fits one of my Wife's taper fingers I am quite sure we could never ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... following is your bill of fare. Fairies you have by scores in flesh-coloured tights, spangles, and paucity of petticoats; gnomes of every description, from the gigantic glittering diamond beetle, to the grotesque and dusky tadpole. Epicene princes, whose taper limbs and swelling busts are well worth the scrutiny of the opera-glass—dragons vomiting at once red flames and witticisms about the fountains in Trafalgar Square—Dan O'Connell figuring in the feathers of a Milesian owl—and the Seven Champions of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... likeness of vast teocallis to Tonatiuh, over whose apex the struggling rays fell red and presageful. Dulled by the stained glass windows, the light that filled the semi-circular chapel at "The Lilacs", was chill and sombre, until the fair sacristan held a taper over the tall wax candles on each side of the altar, whence a mellow radiance soon streamed over all; flashing along the golden letters under the cross, and upon the gilded pipes of the little organ. On the marble steps in front of the altar were two baskets filled with ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a small, wide-mouthed bottle, covered with a card or cork. To this cover fasten a piece of bent wire with a taper on the end. Light the taper and lower it into the jar. It will burn a few seconds and then go out. Raise and light it again, and it will be extinguished as soon as it is plunged into the bottle. This shows that the oxygen of the air is used up by burning ...
— Outlines of Lessons in Botany, Part I; From Seed to Leaf • Jane H. Newell
... Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o' the taper Bows toward her; and would underpeep her lids To see the enclos'd lights, now canopied Under those windows, white and azure, lac'd With ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... him and signed to Ja'afar and Masrur to take their places in due degree,[FN115] whilst the negroes and the eunuchs stood expecting their commands for suit and service. Presently was brought to them a huge waxen taper which lighted up the whole of the hall and the young house-master accosted the King and said to him, "Well come and welcome and fair welcome to our guests who to us are the most esteemed of folk and may Allah honour ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... been so glad that she believed in her old friend; for if she hadn't had, at such a pass, somebody or other to believe in she should certainly have stumbled by the way. Discretion had ceased to consist of silence; silence was gross and thick, whereas wisdom should taper, however tremulously, to a point. She betook herself to Lancaster Gate the morning after the colloquy just noted; and there, in Maud Manningham's own sanctum, she gradually found relief in giving an account of herself. An account of herself was one of the things that she had long been in the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... producing an upright body, smooth and even bark, ample leaf, sweet blossom, the delight of bees, and a goodly shade at distance of eighteen, or twenty five foot. They are also very patient of pruning; but if it taper over much, some of the collateral boughs would be spar'd, or cut off, to check the sap, which is best to be done about Midsummer; and to make it grow upright, take off the prepondering branches with discretion, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... their dissolving with effervescence in any acid, and breaking easily under the needle); these are the 3/2000ths of an inch in their larger external diameter; they are rather deeply imbedded in the outer integument, and taper a little downwards ending in a concave terminal point, into which a minute tubulus enters, like those passing into and through the valves of ordinary Cirripedia: along the axis of imbedment, they are often 4/2000ths of an inch in length. These calcareous beads or rudimental valves ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... was cheery; it might be a question whether all the light did not come from her first, in some way, and perhaps it did; but then Hazel was luminous, and she fluttered about with quick, happy motions, till like a little glancing taper she had shone upon and lit up everybody and everything; and Dorris was sunny with clear content, and Kenneth was blithe, and Desire was scintillant, as she always was either with snaps or smiles; and here came in beaming Miss Craydocke, and gay Asenath and her handsome ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... magnificent canopy, ... supported by four princes of the blood.... After the host walked the king.... Francis I. on that day wore no crown, nor robe of state." With "head uncovered, his eyes cast on the ground, and in his hand a lighted taper," the king of France appeared "in the character of a penitent."(339) At every altar he bowed down in humiliation, not for the vices that defiled his soul, nor the innocent blood that stained his hands, but for the deadly sin of his subjects who had dared to condemn the mass. Following him ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... the bed, a cold perspiration pouring from me. In the darkness on the other side of the hut I heard sounds of furious struggling. Luckily I kept my head. Just by me was a chair on which were matches and a rush taper. I struck a match and held it to the taper. Now in the growing light I could see two forms rolling one over the other on the floor, and from between them came the flash of steel. The fat melted and the light burnt up. It was Indaba-zimbi ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... bag he bound with a pack strap, leaving a loop to sling over his shoulder. I also bound my half a blanket with a pack strap, thinking as I did so that I soon might want to eat the strap. And then, when George and I had filled our waterproof boxes with wax taper matches, and placed a handful of pistol cartridges in our pockets, we were ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... but which, from a certain sucking sound which about this time began to be heard from the bottom, appeared to be giving notice that it would soon require replenishment from a certain canister which, together with a lighted taper, stood ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... joyous, foolish mumming came—the carnival mumming that as a boy I had loved so well, and that, ever since I had come and stitched under my Apollo and Crispin, I had never been loth to meddle and mix in, going mad with my lit taper, like the rest, and my whistle of the Befana, and all the salt and sport of a war of wits such as old Rome has always heard in midwinter since the seven nights ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... two children, kneeling upon the rocky side, looked over into a deep hole, which seemed, so far as the taper would throw its feeble rays downwards, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... man-of-war, its sails neatly furled, and its trim rigging, dark hull, and taper spars, perfectly reproduced in the ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... point on sorrow's chart The line of pain a wretch must still pursue, To end the struggles of a bleeding heart, And grace the triumph misery owes to you How poor your pow'r!—where fortitude, serene, But smiling views the glimmering taper shine; Time soon shall dim, and close the wearied scene, Bestowing solace e'en on woes like mine. Ah! stop your course—too long I've felt your chain, Too long the feeble influence of its pow'r; The heir of grief ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... Lean'd on his staff to lengthen out the tale; Oft have his lips the grateful tribute breath'd, From sire to son with pious zeal bequeath'd. When o'er the blasted heath the day declin'd, And on the scath'd oak warr'd the winter-wind; When not a distant taper's twinkling ray Gleam'd o'er the furze to light him on his way; When not a sheep-bell sooth'd his listening ear, And the big rain-drops told the tempest near; Then did his horse the homeward track descry, [s] The track ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... carbonic acid in a state of combination, the gas must first be liberated by acting upon the substance with a stronger acid, and then applying the lime-water test. The presence of large quantities of carbonic acid in a gaseous mixture can be readily detected by plunging into the vessel a lighted taper, which will be immediately extinguished. This ought always to be adopted in a brewery, where many fatal accidents have happened through workmen going down into empty fermenting vats and wells without first taking ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... me to follow, and taking a lighted taper, led the way into a room at the back of his shop. Ombos pottered about with the taper on the end of a rod; suddenly a big overhead chandelier burst into light and ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... At the poor hoof's protesting as it stamped Idly the granite? Let me glide unseen From thy proud presence: well may'st thou be queen Of all those strange and sudden deaths which damped So oft Love's torch and Hymen's taper lit For happy marriage till the maidens paled And perished on the temple-step, assailed By—what except to envy must man's wit Impute that sure implacable release Of life from warmth and joy? But death ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... seemed to me as if his very glance had become dim. I arose hastily, and approaching his bed, inquired if he wished for a drink; he made a slight movement of his eyelids, as if to thank me, and at that instant the first ray of the rising sun shone in on his bed. Then the eyes lighted up, like a taper that flashes into brightness before it is extinguished—he looked as if saluting this last gift of his Creator; and even as I watched him for a moment, his head fell gently on the side, his kindly heart ceased to beat. He had thrown off the burden ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... where she spent two months with her Luke on their way from Navarre to Andalusia. She dressed her hair high on the top of her head, displaying thus both the graceful curve of her snowy neck and the shape of her pretty head. She wore earrings in her small ears, and the taper fingers of her rough but clean hands were covered with rings. Lastly, Frasquita's voice was as sweet as a flute, and her laugh was so merry and so silvery it seemed like the ringing of bells on Saturday of Glory ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... girls who had died because their loves had been unfortunate,—as small wax tapers whose lights are quenched if a breath of wind blows upon then too strongly. But then Lily was in truth no such slight taper as that. Nor was she the stem that must be broken because it will not bend. She bent herself to the blast during that week of illness, and then arose with her form still straight and graceful, and ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... and gathered himself up until he appeared to taper from his stem like a florist's bouquet, and all the upper part of him was pink and trembling with emotion. Arthur may one day attain corpulence; he ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the hall-lamp had not been lit, so I took a wax taper from the writing-table and, lighting it, proceeded to escort them up the staircase. Some spirit of mischief prompted me by a sudden movement to let the light be blown out. In an instant the hand of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... the columns, a taper was burning, before which knelt a woman, making a vow; the dim flame seemed lost in the vagueness of the arches. Gaud experienced there the feeling of a long-forgotten impression: that kind of sadness and fear that she had felt when quite ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... way from the hall to his lodging. Neither he nor Rex spoke during the quarter of an hour they employed in reaching the street door, but Rex's arm was aching with the effort of sustaining and directing his companion. He lit a taper and prepared to help him up the stairs. But the sight of the familiar entrance recalled Greif to himself and dissipated the first stupor of his grief. He ascended the steps firmly, though he went like a man overcome with fatigue, to whom every movement ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... He set the glass down with a mirthless laugh. "Of course, I won't, if you insist. I intended to taper off—a chap can't turn teetotaler the way he turns a handspring." He eyed the glass with a sudden intensity of longing. "Let's begin to-morrow. Nobody starts a new life at two A. M. ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... look at her husband, but presently rose and took her place before the tea-tray. She was thinking that she had never seen him so disagreeable. Lydgate turned his dark eyes on her and watched her as she delicately handled the tea-service with her taper fingers, and looked at the objects immediately before her with no curve in her face disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all people with unpleasant manners. For the moment he lost the sense ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... having ink on my fingers and a chastened look of woe on my clear-cut Grecian features, I might have poured No. 1 hard wheat and buckwheat flour out of my long taper ears every night, if I had stuck to the profession. Still, as I say, it was for another man's best good that I resigned. The head miller had no control over himself and the proprietor had rather set his heart on my resignation, so ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... moodier Lara, Through the world, as prowls the bat, And habitually wear a Cypress wreath around my hat: And when Death snuffs out the taper Of my Life, (as soon he must), I'll send up to every paper, "Died, T. Mivins; ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... young nymphs, usually so reserved and so easily frightened, become, for this week, as bold and free as so many dragoons. They enter the house, without being announced, open the drawers, visit the secretaries, ransack the cupboards. Pirates, with taper fingers, they put into their baskets and reticules all the valuables they can lay their hands on. Objects of art they are sure to seize, more especially if they are made of the precious metals. It is who shall adorn her reposoir with gold and bronze vases, with enamelled cups, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... fellow mortal, you will hasten to clear your conscience by such an act before the bells announce the hour of its birth. As the stars appear in the heavens, tiny oil lamps are lighted in every house, and among all devout Roman Catholics the image of the Virgin is illuminated with a taper. ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... takes advantage of his absence upstairs to explore it. Under her is Lord Pharanx, certainly in bed, probably asleep. Hester, trembling all over in a fever of fear and excitement, holds a lighted taper in one hand, which she religiously shades with the other; for the storm is gusty, and the gusts, tearing through the crevices of the rattling old casements, toss great flickering shadows on the hangings, which frighten her to death. She has ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... particular taper-light of discrimination too far when I say that there is, to the Celtic mind at least, something humorously naive and childlike in Goethe, mixed in, queerly enough, with all his rich, mellow, and even worldly, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... conscience would not let him rest till he had renounced the heresies in which he had been brought up. The news spread fast. At all the coffeehouses it was told how the prime minister of England, his feet bare, and a taper in his hand, had repaired to the royal chapel and knocked humbly for admittance; how a priestly voice from within had demanded who was there, how Sunderland had made answer that a poor sinner who had long wandered from the true Church implored her to receive and to absolve him; how the doors ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... smoke Appeared to him but as the magic vapour Of some alchymic furnace, from whence broke The wealth of worlds (a wealth of tax and paper): The gloomy clouds, which o'er it as a yoke Are bowed, and put the Sun out like a taper, Were nothing but the natural atmosphere, Extremely wholesome, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... table. There the light from the tallow dip, guttering in the centre, fell upon his handsome face and eyes, his carefully tended beard and hair, his immaculate cuffs and delicate hand, the seal-ring on his taper finger. ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... words in a livelier tone than usual, but it was like the last kindling of the taper in its oil-less socket — for instantly the paleness of death overspread his face, and after a feeble effort to vomit, with convulsions, the natural effect of great loss of blood, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... put out, and the gloom of the room was only lightened by a single bed-room taper, which, as it stood near the door, only served to render palpable the darkness of the further end of the chamber. For half an hour Lord Cashel walked to and fro, anxious, wretched, and in doubt, instead of going to his room. How he wished that Lord Ballindine had married his ward, and taken her ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... here, these many empty days I thought to pack with Credos and Hail Marys So close that not a fear should force the door— But still, between the blessed syllables That taper up like blazing angel heads, Praise over praise, to the Unutterable, Strange questions clutch me, thrusting fiery arms, As though, athwart the close-meshed litanies, My dead should pluck at me from hell, with eyes Alive in ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... beautiful in death, And with a kiss recalls her fleeting breath, To tapers thus, which by a blast expire, A lighted taper, touch'd, restores the fire: She rear'd her swimming eye, and saw the light, And Guilford too, or she had loath'd the sight: Her father's death she bore, despis'd her own, But now she must, she will, have leave to groan: Ah! Guilford, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... Schottus. I remember that Monsieur Huygens (author of the pendulum), who brought up the learned father of that incomparable youth Monsieur de Zulichem, who used to prescribe to me the benefit of his little wax taper (a type whereof is, with the history of it, in some of our Registers) for night elucubrations, preferable to all other candle or lamp light whatsoever. And because it explodes all glaring of the flame, which by no means ought to dart upon the ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... vision! his hour was not yet, And waking, he turn'd on his pallet of straw, And a form by his side he could never forget, By the pale misty light of a taper he saw. "'Tis I! 'tis thy Winifred!"—softly she said, "Arouse thee, and follow—be bold, never fear! There was danger abroad, but my errand has sped, I promised to save thee—and lo I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... service was performed I carried the taper (nota bene) and some pieces of gold to the Bishop who performed the grand mass, and who was sitting in an arm-chair near the altar. The prelate intended to have given them to his assistants, the priests of the King's chapel; but the monks of Saint Denis ran to him ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... women,—have taken up and borne aloft, as if on hands and shoulders, the one chance human body that is brought in to land, and the long spur, from which man's dancing cordage wastes by degrees, find yields its place to long, green streamers, much like those that clung to this tall, taper tree when it stood ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... myself on her beautiful smooth and white belly and pressed against the hair of her mount. With her long taper fingers she guided my prick—I trembled in every limb and almost felt sick with excitement—but when I felt the delicious sensation caused by the insertion of my skinned pintle between the smooth warm oily folds ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... mayor, Adam Stable, was removed, and Nicholas Brembre appointed in his place. A fresh election of aldermen took place,(613) and the City did penance for the recent insult to the duke's escutcheon by offering, at the king's confidential suggestion, a wax taper bearing the duke's arms in St. Paul's. Even that did not satisfy him; nay, it was adding insult to injury (he said), for such an act was an honour usually paid to one who was dead! The citizens were in despair, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... tomb. A large procession, headed by the Czar, the Czarina, and all the chief nobility of the court, followed in the funeral train. The Czar and all the other mourners carried in their hands a small wax taper burning. The ladies were all dressed in black silks. It was said by those who were near enough in the procession to observe the Czar that he ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... 'tis my doom, love's undershrieve, Why this reprieve? Why doth my she-advowson fly Incumbency? To sell thyself dost thou intend By candle's end, And hold the contrast thus in doubt, Life's taper out? Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; And if, to measure age's span, The sober Julian were th' account of man, Whilst you live by the fleet ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... Gorgonian eyes; Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft, And he comes hastening like a moth that hies 30 After a taper; and the midnight sky Flares, a light ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Kneeling on the marble floor, he removed a golden shield, and showed us the hole in the rock of Calvary, where the cross was planted. Close beside it was the fissure produced by the earthquake which followed the Crucifixion. But, to my eyes, aided by the light of the dim wax taper, it was no violent rupture, such as an earthquake would produce, and the rock did not appear to be the same as that of which Jerusalem is built. As we turned to leave, a monk appeared with a bowl of sacred rose-water, which he sprinkled on our hands, bestowing a double ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... stranger secured the door; and, first examining the lower room with great care, he cautiously ascended the ladder. June, as soon as it became dark, had closed the loops of the principal floor, and lighted a candle. By means of this dim taper, then, the two females stood in expectation, waiting to ascertain the person of their visitor, whose wary ascent of the ladder was distinctly audible, though sufficiently deliberate. It would not be easy to say which was the more astonished on finding, when the stranger ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... a hundred and sixty is the whole range of the maxima of the present race of trotting horses. The same thing is seen in the running of men. Many can run a mile in five minutes; but when one comes to the fractions below, they taper down until somewhere about 4.30 the maximum is reached. Averages of masses have been studied more than averages of maxima and minima. We know from the Registrar-General's Reports, that a certain number of children—say from one ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... and fuming and frothing and foaming and yet remaining so cool and clear that a quick fancy would discover thousands of banished fountains under that agitated and impatient surface. Both ends of the island are as much alike as its sides are dissimilar. They taper off almost to a distinct bladepoint of rock, in which a mere doll's flagstaff of a pine-tree grows; then comes a small detached rock, with a small evergreen on it, then a still smaller rock, with a tuft of grass, then a line of partially submerged ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... to this remote country mansion at one o'clock at night? While Herman Brudenell paused in expectancy, taper in hand, Jovial once more opened ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... "without thy aid I am lost; for I love deeply. I have no parents, and they say I am sold to the demon. Oh, take pity on me! save me, if it be true: and if it is but the saying of the wicked, let my soul know the truth; and when I offer thee my taper at the altar of Notre Dame, prove to me that ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... of some good ship appears A friendly light, which moderates their fears; New courage from reviving hope they take, And climbing o'er the waves that taper make, On which the hope of all their lives depends, As his on that fair Hero's hand extends. 150 The ship at anchor, like a fixed rock, Breaks the proud billows which her large sides knock; Whose rage restrained, foaming higher swells, And from ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... from their eyes. Several times, as Madame Claes rested from her writing, Marguerite said: "Mother?" then she dropped as if choking; but the mother, occupied with her last thoughts, did not ask the meaning of the interrogation. At last, Madame Claes wished to seal the letter; Marguerite held the taper, turning aside her head that she might not ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... you can be permitted to participate in the fifth libation, we must enjoin on you one year's penance as a trial of your faith and humility, which you will perform under the direction of the Junior and Senior Wardens, with the skull in one hand, and a lighted taper in the other; which is to teach you that with faith and humility you should cause your light so to shine before men, that they, seeing your good works, may glorify our Father, which is ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... has touched the painted windows; The yellow dawn creeps down the storied panes; Already, in the early solemn twilight, The sanctuary's taper softly wanes. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... the twinkling taper's gleam, Her bed she seeks, of me to dream, But ere she sleeps she kneels to pray For one who loves ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... of nature, which alone is to be blamed; unless we are to join in the blame the ministers who placed such a twinkling taper as a "shining light" in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... see the effect, Regina took a taper from the Murrhine cup on the mantle, and standing on a chair lighted the cluster of burners shaped like Pompeian lamps, in the chandelier nearest the grate; then went back to the rug before the fire, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... about of medium height. A fourth lamp showed me her hands, small, firm, white; also I could catch a glimpse of her arm, as it lay outstretched, her fingers clasping a fan. So I knew her arms were round and taper, hence all her limbs and figure finely molded, because nature does not do such things by halves, and makes no bungles in her symmetry of contour when she plans a noble specimen of humanity. Here was a noble specimen of what ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... meal, she and Mr. Hazel worked for a wager. Her taper fingers went like the wind, and though she watched him, and asked questions, she never stopped plaiting. Mr. Hazel was no carpenter, he was merely Brains spurred by Necessity. He went to work and sawed off four short ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... happy harvest grain. While with many-colored leaves, Glitters the garland on the sheaves; For the mower's work is done, And the young folks' dance begun! Desert street, and quiet mart;— Silence is in the city's heart; And the social taper lighteth; Each dear face that home uniteth; While the gate the town before ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
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